-f'^ 



^ OuE N:e]w West. 

EECOEDS OF TEAYEL 



BETWEEN 



The Mississippi Eiver and the Pacific Ocean. 

OYER THE PLAINS-OVER THE MOUNTAINS THT^nnrTi 
THE GREAT INTERIOR BASIN-OVER THrsZi^^^ 
NEVADAS-TO AND UP AND DOWN 
THE PACIFIC COAST. 



WITH 



Details of the Wonderful Natural Scenery, Agriculture, Mines, 
Business, Social Life, Progress, and Prospects 



OP 



COLORADO, WYOMING, UTAH, IDAHO, MONTANA NEVADA 
CALH^ORNIA, OREGON, WASHINGTON, ^d"^^' 
BRITISH COLUMBIA; 



INCLUDING 



1 Full Description of the Pacific Eailroad • 

AND 

Of the Life of the Mormons, Indians, and Chinese. 

WITH MAP, PORTRAITS, AND TWELVE FULL PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS. 



By SAMUEL BOWLES. <^'" 




PUBLISHED BY SUBSCRIPTION ONLY 

HARTFORD PUBLISHING CO., HARTFORD CT 
J. D. DENNISON, NEW YORK. 

J. A. STODDARD, CHICAGO, ILL. 
1869. 



o 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1869, by 

SAMUEL BOWLES, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of 

Connecticut. 



f^'^^ 
\^1^ 



SAMUEL BOWLES AND COMPANY, 

TRINTERS, ELECTROTYPEKS AND BINDERS, 

SPRINGFIELD, MASS. 



TO 

SCHUYLER COLFAX, 

SpjaKcr of Congress, anb 0ia ^rtsibmt of l^c Wimitb f talcs ; 

TRUSTED AND BELOVED ABOVE ALL OTHER PUBLIC MEN BY THE 
AMERICAN PEOPLE ; 

WHOSE PAST AND PRESENT ARE BOTH THE PLEDGE AND 
PROMISE OF HIS FUTURE; 

VriTH WHOM THESE JOURNEYS THROUGH "OUR NEW WEST," WHOSE 

EXPERIENCES AND RESULTS ARE HERE RECORDED, 

WERE MADE ; 

This Volume is Dedicated, 

BY HIS GRATEFUL FRIEND AND FELLOW-TRAVELER, 

SAMUEL BOWLES. 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



• ♦• 



Frontispiece (on Steel) — Portraits op Vice-President 

Colfax, Lieutenant-Governor Bross and Mr. Bowles. 

Map of States and Territories beyond the Mississippi, 

AND showing the SEVERAL PACIFIC RaILROAD ROUTES, 22 

Emigrants Crossing the Plains, 29 

Laying the Track of the Pacific Railroad, ..... 45 

A First View of Polygamy — A Mormon and his Family, . 61 

"Lo, the Poor Indian" — A Company of Ute Braves, . . Ill 

The March of Civilization — An Indian Encampment and 

A Miner's Cabin, 177 

View of Salt Lake City, 206 

Salt Lake City — Brigham Young — Proposed Mormon 

Temple, 233 

A Representative Mining Town — Austin, Nevada, . . . 272 

Views in San Francisco, 333 

Representative Portraits, 395 

Washing for Gold, 416 

Scenery of the Columbia River, 473 



PREFACE. 



♦ ♦♦■ 



The Pacific Eailroad unlocks the mysteries of Our New 
West. It opens a new world of wealth, and a new world of 
natural beauty, to the working and the wonder of the old. 
The eastern half of America offers no suggestion of its west- 
ern half. The two sides of the Continent are sharp in con- 
trasts of climate, of soil, of mountains, of resources, of produc- 
tions, of everything. Nature, weary of repetitions, has, in 
the New West, created originally, freshly, uniquely, majes- 
tically. In her gifts, in her withholdings, she has been 
equally supreme, equally complete. Nowhere are broader 
and higher mountains; nowhere richer valleys; nowhere 
climates more propitious; nowhere broods an atmosphere 
so pure and exhilarating; nowhere more bountiful deposits 
of gold and silver, quicksilver and copper, lead and iron ; no- 
where denser forests, larger trees; nowhere so wide plains; 
nowhere such majestic rivers ; yet nowhere so barren deserts, 
so arid steppes; nowhere else that nature has planted its 
growths so thickly and so variously, and feeds so many appe- 
tites so richly ; yet nowhere that she withholds so completely, 
and pains the heart and parches the tongue of man so deeply 
by her poverty. 



VI PREFACE. 

To give in detail some clear impressions of this vast and 
various region, its wonderful features of natural scenery, its 
illimitable capacities of growth and wealth, its present crude 
and conflicting civilizations, — its mining populations, its Mor- 
mons, its Chinese, and its Indians, — and still its sure promise 
of the finest race, and the broadest, freest, most active and 
most aggressive society, commerce and industry, that the 
world has yet developed, — this is the excuse and the promise 
of this book. The author has spent two summers in intimate 
travel over the regions comprehended in the volume. The 
first (1865) was before the Railroad was begun, when he trav- 
eled by stage from the Missouri Eiver to the Pacific Ocean, 
and thence north to Oregon, Washington Territory, and 
Puget's Sound ; stopping for leisure study of Colorado, of 
Utah and its Mormons, of Nevada and its mines; and visit- 
ing all the distinctive points of interest, either for scenery, 
for business improvement, or for social characteristics. Again 
in 1868, he passed over the then already completed Railroad 
to the crest of the great continental mountain ranges, and, 
thence descending among the great folds of Mountains and 
elevated Parks that distinguish Colorado, and make it the 
geographical center and phenomenon of the Continent, spent 
some weeks in camp life in that future Switzerland of Amer- 
ica. The company of so distinguished and popular public men 
as Mr. Colfax, the Speaker and the Vice-President, and Lieu- 
tenant Governor Bross of Illinois, during both summers, 
smoothed all our ways, and unlocked for our study all the 
mysteries of social and business life. "We were welcomed to 
generous hospitality of head and heart, and gained at once 
completest knowledge of the states and territories visited. 
Study, then and since, of all local records and authorities, has 



PREFACE. Vll 

completed and kept alive my acquaintance with the growth, 
cliaracter, and capacity of this new kingdom of our Continent. 
The author must therefore be at fault if, in this compila- 
tion of the original records of his two summers' journeys, 
corrected and reviewed by the help of all other sources of 
information, he shall fail to convey some true idea of the 
present and promise of this Western Half of the American 
Continent. He invites particular attention to his chapters 
on the Central Parks and Mountains of Colorado ; on the 
Mormons and their polygamy and political pretensions; on 
the Sierra Nevadas and their scenery in California, including 
that wonderful valley of the Yo Semite, the one unrivalled 
sublimity of nature in all the known world, and its neighbor- 
ing groves of Mammoth Trees; on the Chinese, and their 
place in the industry, domestic life, and business of the Pa- 
cific States; on the Willamette Valley of Oregon; on the 
Scenery of the Columbia, the only continental river that 
breaks through the continental ranges of mountains ; on the 
forests of Washington Territory, and the beauties and capaci- 
ties of Puget's Sound ; on the conditions and principles of 
Mining in Colorado, Nevada, and California ; on the Agricul- 
ture of Colorado, California, and Oregon; and on the grand 
commercial and industrial future of this interior and Pacific 
Coast Empire of ours. He will fail, if the reader does not 
come to share the impression, that here is a nature to pique 
the curiosity and challenge the admiration of the world ; an 
atmosphere to charm by its beauty and to heal by its purity 
and its dryness ; a wealth of minerals and a wealth of agricul- 
ture that fairly awe by their boundlessness; an aggregation 
of elements and forces that, with development, with increase 
and mixture of populations, with facility and cheapness of 



VIU PKEFACK 

intercourse, — witli steamships on the Pacific Ocean, and rail- 
roads across the Continent to the Atlantic, — are destined to 
develop a society and a civilization, a commerce and an 
industry, a wealth and a power, that will rival the most 
enthusiastic predictions for our Atlantic States Empire, and 
together, if we stand together in the future, will present on 
the North American Continent such a triumph of Man in 
race, in government, in social development, in intellectual 
advancement, and in commercial supremacy, as the world 
never saw, — as the world never yet fairly dreamed of. 

S. B. 
Springfield, Mass., March, 1869. 



INTRODTICTOEY LETTERS 

FROM VICE-PRESIDENT COLFAX AND GOVERNOR BROSS. 



■•♦♦ 



Washington, February 10, 1869. 
BIy Dear Me. Bowles : — 

The notice of your publishers that you intend to incorporate the 
sketches of the two long journeys we had together, amplified, revised, 
and illustrated, in a new and more permanent work, brings again 
vividly before my mind, like a panorama, the stirring incidents of these 
expeditions, the magnificent scenery, the constantly changing and novel 
experiences, the explorations down into the bowels of the earth and up 
to the summits of lofty mountains, the dashing rides down the Sierras 
and at the Geysers, the Oceans of Water, and of Land, and the open 
door of Opportunity which everywhere invited us to enter, and to add 
so largely to our stock of information as to "Our New West." I have 
not forgotten the Indian hostilities, which threatened us on both 
journeys ; but I remember far more delightfully the boundless Plains ; 
the snow-capped Mountains ; the majestic Columbia; our Mediterranean 
of the North-west, Puget's Sound ; that magic City, San Francisco ; the 
wonderful Geysers ; the Mammoth Trees ; and the peerless Yo Semite. 

If our people, who go to Europe for pleasure, travel and observation, 
knew a tithe of the enjoyment we experienced in our travel under our 
own flag, far more of them would turn their faces toward the setting 
sun ; and after exploring that Switzerland of America, the Rocky 
Mountains, with their remarkable Parks and Passes, go onward to that 



X INTRODUCTOEY LETTERS. 

realm -wbicli fronts upon tlie Pacific, whose history is so romantic, and 
whoso destiny is so sure; and which that great highway of Nations, 
the Pacific Railroad, will, this Spring, bring so near to all of us on 
the Atlantic slope. 

These cannot now realize our long-drawn two thousand miles of 
staging West, and one thousand Northward from the Golden Gate ; for 
palatial cars and lightning trains will render travel a pleasure, instead 
of a fatigue ; but your graphic sketches of what is to be seen will, 
wherever they are read, increase the numbers of those who will not 
only add to their enjoyment and knowledge, but also strengthen the 
patriotic ties which bind together such distant regions, as the Atlantic 
and Pacific States, into one harmonious Republic, by following so far as 
possible in our path across the Continent. 

Very truly yours, 

Schuyler Colfax. 



Tribune Office, Chicago, ") 

February 20, 1869. ) 
To THE Hartford Publishing Company: — 

I learn, with much pleasure, that you propose to publish a revised and 
illustrated edition of Mr. Bowles's already famous book, ** Across the 
Continent," to include also his sketches of travel and camp life in the 
Rocky Mountains the past summer. The journey of Vice-President 
Colfax and his party to California, in the summer of 1865, seems to 
have marked the commencement of a most important era in the prog- 
ress of the country. When we left the Missouri River in May, work 
had scarcely begun on the Union Pacific Railway ; but we found the 
energetic President of the Central Pacific, Governor Stanford, and his 
contractors, vigorously engaged in pushing their line up the western 
slope of the Sierra Nevada mountains, and forty-two miles of the road 
were completed. When we returned, in the latter part of September, 
the forces of the Union Pacific were fully organized, since which time 



INTRODUCTORY LETTERS. XI 

they have performed the most astonishing feats in railway building 
ever achieved. The managers of the Central Pacific have been work- 
ing, perhaps, with equal energy, as the engineering difficulties to be 
overcome by them were immensely more formidable, and I have every 
reason to believe that the lines will connect at or near the head of Salt 
Lake within the next two months. Thus the great Continental Rail- 
way, regarded only four years ago by perhaps a majority of our people 
as a chimerical project, will become an accomplished fact, — a magnifi- 
cent reality. 

The completion of the road and the rush of tens of thousands of 
our people to the Central Territories and to the Pacific Coast will render 
the new edition of Mr. Bowles's book none the less acceptable and 
valuable to the public. His descriptions of the country, through which 
the road runs, and through most of which we passed, are so compre- 
hensive and accurate ; his observations are so discriminating, graphic 
and just ; his estimates, based on figures and personal inspection of the 
vast mineral resources and the commercial advantages of the country, 
are so new, suggestive and exciting, that his work should be carefully 
read by every tourist before he sets out upon his journey ; and it will 
be consulted by him with great advantage at every stage of his progress. 
The information it has imparted to the Nation has, in my judgment, 
been immensely more varied and valuable than they have derived from 
all previous sources put together. Certainly no former work has ever 
circulated so widely among the people, and they have profited largely 
by the new, varied and most valuable facts it contains. 

Wishing you all possible success, 

I am very truly. 

Your obedient servant, 

William Bross. 



CONTENTS. 



I. INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 



PAGE, 



Our New West — Its Extent and Importance, and Four Great 
Divisions — The Cordilleras of South America and their Progress 
Through North America — The First Great Division, the Plains 
— The Second, the Rocky Mountains — The Third, the Great 
Interior Basin — The Fourth, the Sierra Nevadas and the Pacific 
Coast— The Characteristics of Each — The Promise of the Book, 23 

n. OVER THE PLAINS BY STAGE. 

The Rival Depots for the Traffic of the Plains— An Indian Scare 
to Begin With — The Richness of the Country for Two Hundred 
Miles — Scenes on the Plains — The Prairie Schooners by Day 
and Night— A Hail and Thunder-Storm— The Week's Ride and 
the Plains Summed Up— The Civilization of the Country— The 
Meals at the Stations — Life and Death in Contrast — Personal 
Sketches : Vice-President Colfax and Governor Bross — The Ad- 
vent of the Mountains, . 31 

HL THE PACIFIC RAILROAD. 

The Story of the Pacific Railroad— The Pullman Cars— Omaha 
and Council Bluffs— Over the Plains by Rail— Cheyenne— The 
Mountain Pass and its various Revelations of Plain, Desert and 
Mountain — The Architecture of Wind, Rain and Sand— Echo 
and Weber Canyons — Around Salt Lake and Across the Great 
Interior Basin — Scenes along the Route — Up and over the Sierra 
Nevadas — Donner Lake — The Greatest Triumph in Railroad 
Building in the World — Through California — The Continental 
Railroad Reviewed and Summed up — Its Beginning, its Execu- 
tion and its Results, 47 



XIV CONTENTS. 

TV. COLORADO: ITS MOUNTAINS AND PARKS. 

PAGE. 

Back to the Rocky Mountains — Their Finest Scenery Away From 
the Railroad Line — Colorado, the Center and Backbone of the 
Continent — Its Three Grand Divisions — Its Majestic Moun- 
tains — Its Great Natural Parks — North, Middle and South 
Parks — Summer Scenes Among the Mountains and Parks — 
The Western Division of Colorado — The Stage Ride from 
Cheyenne — Night in a Stage-Coach — Experiences on the Road 
— Denver, its Growth and Promise, and its Panoramic Moun- 
tain View — Salt Lake City and Denver Compared, 75 

V. LIFE AMONG THE MOUNTAINS. 

The Roads from Denver into the Mountains — What they Reveal to 
the Traveler — How Pleasure Parties Travel and Camp — The 
North Clear Creek and Central City—The South Clear Creek 
Valley, and its Attractions — Idaho and its Springs — Outfit for 
a Camping Experience — The Mule — Over the Mountains by 
Berthoud Pass to Middle Park — The Flowers and the Forests 
of the Upper Mountains — The Camp at Night, 94 

YI. THE MIDDLE PARK AND THE UTE INDIANS. 

A Day's Ride Across the Middle Park — An Indian Encampment, 
and our Reception thereat — The Mountain Raspberries — The 
Hot Sulphur Springs — The Ute Indians; How they Live, Move 
and have Being — A Lingering Farewell to Middle Park — Over 
the Boulder Pass — A Winter's Morning and a Summer's Noon on 
the Mountains — Night in a Barn, 110 

YIL MOUNTAIN CLIMBING AND CAMP LIFE. 
Up Gray's Peak from Georgetown — The View from it — A Satur- 
day Night Camp on the Snake River — Sunday with a " Pros- 
pector" — A Butter and Milk Ranch in the Mountains — The 
Valley of the Blue and its Mining Operations — Over the Breck- 
inridge Pass in a Thunder Storm — Hamilton and South Park — 
Reunion with the Grand Party — Ascent of Mount Lincoln — A 
Snow Storm on the Summit — Montgomery — The Everlasting 
Plattes— The Side Valleys of the South Park, ....... 129 

VIIL AN INDIAN "SCARE" AND THE INDIANS. 

Our Experiences with Indian Wars — A Terrible " Scare " in the 
Mountains — A Night in Camp with Indian Expectations — The 



CONTENTS. XV 



Indian Question Generally, Past, Present and Future— The 
Arkansas Valley— The Twin Lakes and their Beauties of 
Scenery and Life—Down the Valley and Across South Park 
Again— A Grand Camp Scene— Who we Were and How we 
Liyed— An Evening with Friendly Indians— The Last of our 
Camp Experiences— Out of the Park, Through the " Garden of 
the Gods," and Back to Denver— A Motley Procession Through 
the Town, 



151 



IX. THE MINES AND THE FAEMS OF COLORADO. 

The Beginning, Growth and Present Condition of the Mining In- 
terests of Colorado— 1859 to 1869— Central City and its Opera- 
tions—Georgetown and its Silver Mines— Gulch Mining and its 
jievival— The Certain Future Growth of the Mining Wealth of 
the State— The Greater Agriculture Wealth of Colorado— Its 
Rapid Development— Fertile Valleys and Astonishing Crops- 
Cost of Living— Stock Raising— Coal and Iron and Manufac- 
tures—Professor Agassiz and the Glaciers— The Population of 
Colorado and its Characteristics— When to Visit its Moun- 
tains and Parks— The Resort of Pleasure Seekers and Health 
Hunters, 1'^^ 

X. BY STAGE INTO UTAH. 

The Old Stage Lines Across the Continent — Features of Do- 
mestic Life among the Mountains— Some of the Women of the 
Border— Things in Cans— Game, the Antelope and the Grizzly 
Bear— A Rapid Stage Ride Down the Mountains— Entrance 
into the Salt Lake Valley— View of Salt Lake City— Its Beauty 
of Location, its Capacities of Wealth, and its Future Realiza- 
tions—The Reception by the Mormons— A Sunday Morning 
Hot Sulphur Bath, '^^^ 

XL A WEEK IN SALT LAKE CITY. 

The Hospitalities of Mormons and Gentiles— What we Saw and 
What we Didn't See— The Beginning and Growth of Utah— 
The Organization of Labor and Immigration — Character of the 
Population and of the Rulers— The Close Church and State Gov- 
ernment— Education— " The Tithings"—Brigham Young and 
his Power — Dining with the Twelve Apostles— Bathing in Salt 
Lake— The City and How it is Located and Built — The Taber- 
nacles and Brigham Young's Harem— Irrigation and Crops— 



^ 



XVI CONTENTS. 

PAGE. 

The Basin Filling Up with Water — Are the Mormons to be 
Drowned Out? — The Productions of the Mormons — The In- 
troduction of Manufactures — Gold and Silver Mining, and Brig- 
ham Young's Views on it — An Evening at the Mormon Theatre, 207 

XII. MEN AND WOMEN, OE POLYGAMY, IN UTAH. 

Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball, and Other Leading Apostles — 
Long Interviews and Talks with Them — Discussion about 
Polygamy — Suggestion of a New Revelation against it — Later 
Extension of Polygamy — The Sabbath Services of the Mormons 
— Preaching by Brigham Young — Extracts from Mormon Ser- 
mons — Mr. Colfax in the Mormon Pulpit — How does Polygamy 
Work?— The Children— The Husband and the Wives— What the 
Latter Say and How they Bear it — Illustrations of Polygamous 
Life and Habits — Brigham Young's Children and Wives — Beauty 
and the Beast — List of Young's Harem, 232 

XIIL THE FUTURE OF THE MORMONS. 

What of the Church and Polygamy? — How the Problem will bo 
Solved — No Fit Successor for Brigham Young — The Past Neg- 
lect and Present Duty of the Government — The Division of the 
Territory — How the Soldiers Attack Polygamy — The Order of 
Danite Assassins, and their Bloody Work — The Mountain 
Meadow Massacre — The Rebellious Morrisites and Josephites — 
Summing up of Observations in Utah and our Conclusions — Our 
Stage Driver " The Coming Man," .259 

XIV. THROUGH THE DESERT BASIN BY STAGE. 

From the Rocky Mountains to the Sierra Nevadas by Stage — 
Through Central Utah and Nevada — Characteristics of the 
Country — A Fast Ride — The Alkali Deposits and the Dust 
— The Compensations in Nature — Reese River Valley, and 
Austin, a Representative Mining Town — A Classical Retreat — 
Virginia City and Gold Hill — The Neighborhood of the Sierras 
— The Rich Valleys — Steamboat Springs — The Anomalies of 
the Great Basin —Why, Whence, What? 273 

XV. THE MINES OF NEVADA. 

The Beginning of Silver Mining in Nevada and its Results — 
The Comstock Lode — Review of the JVIines at Austin — How 



COiN^TENTS. XVU 

PAQE. 

the Ore is Reduced — Details of Operations at Virginia City 
and Gold Hill — The Comstock Lode Nearly Used Up — Inspect- 
ing the Mines — A Tour through the Gould & Curry Mne — 
"Nature Abhors a Vacuum" — New Discoveries in Nevada — 
The White Pine Mines and their Promise — A Warning to Brig- 
ham Young — How the Miners Divide their Fat Things— The 
Fascination of Mining— The Ease with which People are Swin- 
dled — Mines vs. "Faro Banks" — Advice in General and in 
Particular to those who have the Gold and Silver Fever, . .284 

XVI. OYER THE MOUNTAINS TO THE OCEAN. 

The Stage Ride over the Sierra Nevadas — The Mountain Toll 
Roads and Freighting and Staging upon them — Rapid Riding 
— A Break-neck Pace — The Scenery of the Sierras — Lake Tahoe 
— Placerville — Sacramento — A Steamboat Ride to San Francisco 
— The Patriotic Traveler on Reaching the Pacific Coast — The 
Unity of the American People — The Wonderful Development 
of the Pacific States, . . . . » 308 

XVIL CALIFORNIA. 

The Extent and Variety of California's Surface — Her Two Ranges 
of Mountains — The Sacramento Basin — The Coast Valleys — 
The Forests of the Coast Range and the Sierra Nevadas — The 
Lakes of the State — The Lake District of the Continent — The 
Harbors on the Coast — The Bay of San Francisco — The Dry 
Climate of California — Amount of Rain in the Valleys and of 
Snow in the Mountains — The Contrasts with a Former Era — 
The Peculiarities of San Francisco's Climate — The Varieties of 
Heat and Cold to be had in the State — The Glory of Spring in 
California — The Grand Features of Nature in the State — Her 
Revolutions and Revelations in Nature and in Science — The 
Growth of California — Her Railroad System, 317 

XVm. SAN FRANCISCO. 

The Mysterious Fascination of "Friscoe" — An Early Error in 
Laying Out the City — The Winds and Real Estate — The Grand 
Views from the City's Hights — The Garden-Yards of the Town 
— The Peculiarities of its Climate — The Anomalies and Contra- 
dictions of its Social and Business Life — The Smartness of the 
Old Californians — The Women of San Francisco — A Scandal- 
Making and Scandal-Loving Town — The Feminine Lunch Par- 
2 



XVlll CONTENTS. 

PAGB. 

ties — The Tempering Influences of Time and the Railroad — 
Hotels and Restaurants — The " What Cheer House" — The 
Wells-Fargo Express Company — The Markets of San Francisco 
— Fruit, Fish, Flour and Meat — Prices Here and in the East — 
Buildings and Earthquakes — The Excursion to the Cliflf — The 
Seals and the Pelicans — Morals, Education and Religion — The 
Dominance of Northern and National Sentiments — School- 
Houses and Churches and Ministers — The Commerce and Man- 
ufactures of San Francisco — Interesting Statistics — The Cer- 
tainties of the Future — London, New York and San Francisco 
Contrasted, 332 

XIX. COUNTRY EXCURSIONS IN CALIFORNIA. 

Southern California — Los Angelos, etc. — The Country About San 
Francisco — Oakland, Santa Clara, San Jose, etc- — A Ride Around 
the Bay — The Old Mission Establishments and their History — 
The Country in Summer — A Trip to the Geysers — Russian 
River, Napa and Sonoma Valleys and their Characteristics — 
" Hell on Earth" Indeed— The Fashionable " Baths" of Califor- 
nia — A San Francisco Girl " Takes a Drink" — The Wines of 
California — Champagne the Mother's Milk of the True Cali- 
fornian — Back to the City, ^ . . 362 

XX. THE YO SEMITE VALLEY AND THE BIG TREES. 

The Impressions of the Valley — General Description of its Features 
— Its Columns of Rock — Its Water-falls — How to Pronounce Yo 
Semite — The Journey to the Valley — The Big Tree Grove and 
the Yo Semite Dedicated to Public Use — June the Season for 
the Excursion — The High Sierras above and around the Valley 
— What they Reveal — The Coulterville Road and Bowers' 
Cave — The Big Tree Groves — Interesting Facts about the 
Trees — The Largest Excursion Party to Valley and Trees, . . 374 

XXI. THE CHINESE. 

The Human Nature Curiosity of California — The Sixty Thousand 
Chinese — Their Character, Habits and Occupations — The Pacific 
Railroad built by Them — How they are treated by the People — 
The Indian and the Chinaman — The Limitations of the Chinese 
Mind — Stony Soil for Missionary Labor — The True Elements of 
Influence over Them — The Bath-House and the Restaurant the 
Real Missionaries of Civilization and Christianity — The Morals, 



CONTENTS. XIX 

FIGX. 

Keligion and Vices of the Chinese — The Opium-Eater — A Grand 
Chinese Banquet to Mr. Colfax — A Specimen of " Pigeon Eng- 
lish" — The Dinner and how we Ate it, — and then went out to get 
Something to Eat — Summing up of the Chinaman in America, 394: 

XXII. MINING IN CALIFORNIA. 

California the Child of Gold — Her Total Production and Present 
Yield — The Mineral Belt of the State — The Different Processes of 
Mining — The Dead Rivers, the Deep Diggings and Hydraulic Min- 
ing — The Quartz Mines and Mills — The Fremont Fizzle in Mari- 
posa — The Increasing R€liability of Mining as a Business — The 
Providence in the Gold and Silver Discoveries — Decrease in the 
Production of the Precious Metals in America and the World — 
Valuable Statistics on the Subject — The Other Mineral Wealth 
of California, . . . . , 417 

XXIII. FARMING IN CALIFORNIA. 

The Romance of California's Agriculture — Its History and its 
Present Condition — The Wheat Production — The Vineyards 
and the Wine — Mulberry Trees and Silk — The Vegetables and 
Fruit — The Culture of Oranges — The Nuts and Dried Fruits 
— The Cheapness of Production — The Strange Facts of Climate 
and Culture in California — Six Months of Seed-time and Six 
Months of Harvest — No Manure and No Turf in California — 
The Wheat and its Flour — No Irrigation Required — The Mois- 
ture in the Soil — Land and its Price — The Need of Small Farms 
and Diversified Culture — The Growth of the Agricultural Coun- 
ties — Advice to Emigrant Farmers, 430 

XXIV. OREGON— WASHINGTON— BRITISH COLUMBIA. 

Overland to the North — The Surprises of Oregon, Washington 
and Puget's Sound — A Week's Ride in a " Mud Wagon" — Up 
Through the Sacramento Valley — Chico and General Bidwell, 
Red Bluffs and the John Browns— The Mingling Mountains and 
New Valleys — Shasta, Yreka and Jacksonville — Mount Shasta 
and Pilot Knob — The Forests in Whole and in Detail — Joe 
Lane and Jesse Applegate — The Willamette Valley, the Garden 
of Oregon — The Rains of Oregon — Portland — The New England 
of the Pacific — Through Washington Territory to Puget's Sound — 
The " Square Meal" Feature of Pacific Coast Civilization — The 
Lumber Wealth, and Water and Forest Beauty of Puget's 
Sound — Victoria and Vancouver's Island — New Westminster 



XX CONTENTS. 

PAGE. 

and British Columbia — British Taxation and Rebellious Sub- 
jects — Decrease of Population and Wealth — A Good Time at 
Victoria — John Bull and Brother Jonathan Fraternize Over 
Food and Drink — The San Juan Dispute — The Hudson Bay 
Company's Depots — The Snow Mountains and the Summer 
Gardens of Victoria — Contrasts there and with the East, . . 445 

XXV. THE COLUMBIA HI VERBID AHO— MONTANA. 

The Extent and Importance of the Columbia River — The Scenery 
of its Conflict with the Mountains — Fort Vancouver and General 
Grant — The Cascades and The Dalles — The Railroad Portages — 
No River Scenery so Grand as that of the Columbia — Mount 
Hood — The Rivalry of the High Mountains — The Extent of the 
Navigation of the Columbia, East, North and South — Railroad 
Connections with Salt Lake and the Rest of Mankind — The Stage 
Ride over the Blue Mountains, Through Idaho, to Salt Lake — 
The Shoshone Falls, the Rival of Niagara — The Stage Lines 
Through Idaho and Montana — A Trip Through Montana — Its 
Mountains and its Mines — The Northern Pacific Railroad — Mon- 
tana's Present Development and Future Prospects — The Boat 
Ride Down the Missouri River Home, 472 

XXVL SANDWICH ISLANDS— COLORADO CANYON. 

Hospitalities to Mr. Colfax — What was Left Unseen — The Sandwich 
Islands — Their Past, Present and Future — Their Sugar, Scenery, 
Volcanoes and Climate — Alaska and Arizona — The Country to be 
Opened by the Southern Pacific Railroad — The Canyon of the 
Colorado — The Unknown Land of the Republic — The Solitary 
Passage of the Canyon — Underground Rivers and the Secret of 
the Gulf Stream — Scientific Explorations of the New West — The 
Slang Words and Phrases of Colorado and California — The Indians 
of the Pacific States — Sentimental Leave-taking at San Francisco, 493 

XXVII. HOME BY THE ISTHMUS. 

The Steamship Line between San Francisco and New Y"ork by the 
Isthmus — Its Business, and its Relations to the Pacific Coast 
Life — Its Revolution by the Railroad — Our Voyage Home — Life 
on a California Steamer — The Scenery Along the Coast — Panama 
and its Bay — The Ride Across the Isthmus — Tropical Sights and 
Experiences — The Quick Trip on the Atlantic Side to New York 
— The Continental Journey Ended and Summed Up — America 
Realizes Herself and Recognized by the World, 510 



OUR NEW WEST. 



■ ♦♦♦ 



I. 

INTEODUCTORY CHAPTER. 

Our New West — Its Extent and Importance, and Four Great Divis- 
ions—The Cordilleras of South America and their Progress Through 
North America — The First Great Division, the Plains — The Second, 
the Rocky Mountains— The Third, the Great Interior Basin— The 
Fourth, the Sierra Nevadas and the Pacific Coast— The Characteris- 
tics of Each — The Promise of the Book. 

Our New West, — cut through its center by the 
east and west line of the Pacific Eailroad, and only 
now and thus opened freely to the knowledge and 
the occupation of the American people, — is the larger 
half of the territory of the United States. From the 
Missouri Kiver to the Pacific Ocean is fifteen hundred 
to eighteen hundred miles; from British America on 
the north to Mexico on the south is from one thou- 
sand to twelve hundred miles. The great mountain 
chain of the Continent with its subdivisions separate 
this region into four marked sections. 

The Cordilleras of South America, marching in un- 
broken and firm column from its south to its north, 



24 OUR NEW WEST. 

and making the most magnificent mountain range in 
the world by its length, its hight. and its unity, hum- 
bles itself almost to the sea in crossing the Isthmus, 
but rears its columns anew in Central America and 
Mexico, with occasional individual peaks that are as 
famous for hight and majesty as any in all its hemi- 
spherical sweep, and yet nowhere renews that un- 
yielding unity that is its distinguishing southern char- 
acteristic. Approaching the broader sections of West- 
ern North America, as if feeling the appeal for a 
wider parentage, it breaks into several lines, two 
especially so majestic and firm and distinctive, that 
each might almost fairly claim to be the parent range. 
The m.ain line, unmistakably, however, passes easterly 
with but little disorder, and becomes what we call 
the Kocky Mountains of North America, on from Cen- 
tral Mexico through New Mexico into Colorado, where 
it centers and readjusts its powers, and, again and 
more widely spreading, stretches northward through 
British America to the Arctic Ocean. The rival line 
of the Sierra Nevada has its birth or separation 
in Lower California, and, forming the bold and mag- 
nificent eastern boundary of California, goes north 
through Oregon and Washington Territory, and 
spreads itself over the coast lines of British Columbia, 
furnishing, both in California and Oregon, some of the 
highest and finest individual peaks to be found in the 
whole territory of the United States. As it enters 
California on the south, it sends a minor line of 
mountains west near the coast, which is carried with 
considerable uniformity into Northern California, there 
rejoins the Sierra Nevada, but again opens to form 



THE PLAINS AND THE MOUNTAINS. 25 

that garden of Oregon, the Willamette valley. Be- 
tween these mountain ranges in California, and 
among the folds of each, lie the great wealth, the 
great beauty, the great variety of soil, climate and 
production, of that wonderful and representative state 
of the Pacific coast. 

Beginning on the east with the Missouri Eiver, and 
going west, there is an open, treeless, nearly level 
stretch of plains, five hundred miles wide, to the 
Kocky Mountains. For the most part, it is high table- 
land, gradually but imperceptibly rising from the 
river to the mountain line ; stretching from the Brit- 
ish borders on the north to the Hke table-lands of 
Mexico on the south ; with three or four great rivers 
flowing through its whole width, and many lesser 
streams freely watering its eastern and southern bor- 
ders; yet for the great part too dry for general agri- 
cultural purposes, and only now inviting use as the 
great pasture-ground of the Nation. It seems to be 
covered with the wash of the mountains; and this 
grand ocean of land makes up the first section of 
the journey across the Continent, and is called The 
Plains. 

Next comes the Eocky Mountains section, and this, 
too, from where the Plains end over into the basin 
of Salt Lake, is five hundred miles, — a broad line of 
mountains and rolling table-lands, ranging from seven 
thousand to fourteen thousand feet high; full of the 
most unique forms of nature; rich in inspiration to 
the poetic traveler; and rich in mineral wealth to the 
patient, persevering miner. 

The third section, another five hundred miles still, 



26 OUR NEW WEST. 

begins with the end of the Eocky Mountain ranges in 
the Salt Lake valley, and stretches on west to the 
Sierra Nevadas. The central parts of this section, 
comprising the bulk of Utah and Nevada, form the 
great interior basin of the Continent. It is five 
hundred miles from east to west, and an average of 
half that distance from north to south. The scanty 
waters of this interior region find no outlet to either 
ocean. The great Salt Lake of Utah is its principal 
body of water, and this has no visible outgo, though 
richly fed from various quarters. Lines of mountains 
or high hills pass north and south every twelve or 
twenty miles through it. The streams, that flow out 
of them, lose themselves in the sands of the valleys. 
There are few trees and but little verdure on hill or 
plain. Gi;eat patches of salt and alkali deposits in- 
tensify the general barrenness of the scene, and load 
the dry air with painful exhalations. The whole re- 
gion is high ; rising gradually from four thousand feet 
above the sea level at Salt Lake to seven thousand 
and eight thousand feet at the center, it as gradually 
falls away to the original four thousand feet under 
the Sierra Nevadas. The valleys adjoining the Rocky 
Mountains in Utah, and those near the Sierras in Ne- 
vada, with one or two intermediate ones, are suf- 
ficiently watered to return good crops, and irrigation 
widens this area and enriches the yield; but for the 
most part the whole basin is a desert, not so much 
from poverty of soil as from lack of moisture. 

But for the patient industry of the Mormons in 
Utah and the temptations of the rich silver mines in 
Nevada, this country would have still remained un- 



THE INTERIOR BASIN — CALIFORNIA. 27 

peopled and unknown, and the Pacific Eailroad still a 
mere problem of our progress. To the north of this 
independent basin, the Columbia and its branches 
enter; and to the south, the Colorado, and yet they 
do not essentially change the character of the region 
they water; and Idaho and Eastern Oregon on the 
one hand, and Southern Utah and Nevada and Ari- 
zona on the other, save in narrow valleys that the 
streams cannot get through without enriching, present 
little that is lovely in nature or inviting to the farmer. 
The richness of mineral deposits tempts the greedy 
explorer, and where he is fortunate, agriculture will 
follow under whatever restrictions; and occasional 
rare phenomena in rock or river, like the Grand Can- 
yon of the Colorado and the rival of Niagara in the 
Shoshone Falls in Idaho, seduce the traveler from the 
through route. 

Fourth, and finally, are the Sierra Nevadas and the 
country between them and the Pacific Ocean, — a 
width of about two hundred miles, which, both in 
California and Oregon, compensates for the dreary 
wastes behind in a wealth and majesty of forest, such 
as the world can offer nowhere else, and in a variety 
and richness of agricultural production, that unites 
the offerings of temperate and tropical zones, forms 
the sure basis of a permanent and unmeasured wealth, 
and laughs poverty and famine to scorn. 

Into and through these regions, — with more of fa- 
miliarity than form, with more of grand result of 
knowledge than of detail of facts, with the authority 
of two summer journeys among them, and with con- 
scientious study of their nature and resource and so- 



28 OUR NEW WEST. 

ciety, — this book invites the reader. It opens to him 
the present state and the future promise of the larger 
part of the American Republic, — new yet to the 
world in every sense, but destined surely to a mighty 
influence upon all the after growth of Republic and 
world, and to be counted prominently in the advance 
of all our civilization. 



II. 

OYEK THE PLAINS BY STAGE. 

The Rival Depots for the Traffic of the Plains— An Indian Scare to 
Begin With— The Richness of the Country for Two Hundred Miles — 
Scenes on the Plains— The Prairie Schooners by Day and Night — A 
Hail and Thunder- Storm — The Week's Ride and the Plains Summed 
Up— The Civilization of the Country— The Meals at the Stations- 
Life and Death in Contrast— Personal Sketches: Vice-President 
Colfax and Governor Bross — The Advent of the Mountains. 

From the Missouri Eiver to the Mountains, — 
now a raih'oad ride of twenty-four hours, — was in the 
summer of 1865 a stage ride of six days and nights. 
Atchison, in northern Kansas, was then the point of 
departure ; Omaha, above, was but a feeble rival for 
the outfitting of emigration and freight trains to Col- 
orado and Utah; Leavenworth and Kansas City, be- 
low, were struggling vainly to maintain a suprem- 
acy they had but lately enjoyed. Long trains of 
heavily loaded wagons, drawn by mules and oxen, 
were moving out daily ; but warehouses and yards 
were crowded with heavy machinery for saw-mills 
and gold-mills, with food to eat and clothes to wear, 
with agricultural implements for new farms beyond^ 
waiting their turn in the great summer's commerce 



32 OUR NEW WEST. 

Everytliing was carried by the pound; six to ten 
cents from the river to the mountains ; twelve to 
eighteen through to Utah; so that eastern prices 
were doubled and trebled to the settlers in and 
around the Rocky Mountains. 

Our fine Concord coach and its team of six gay 
horses waited for the delayed incoming stage, and 
when it came, a bunch of Indian arrows lodged in 
its sides, and the broken nerves of its passengers, in- 
cluding a mother and children, confirmed their story 
of an Indian attack some one hundred and fifty miles 
out. But we were all well armed, and the brave 
General Connor, then commanding on the Plains, was 
our companion and escort. We represented the great 
American nation, — it would not do to be afraid or to 
hesitate, — and so we drove on and out, — our hopes 
our fears belying, our fears our hopes. 

For the first two hundred miles west from the river, 
through northern Kansas and southern Nebraska, the 
country presents the characteristics of the finest prai- 
rie scenery of the West, — illimitable stretches of ex- 
q^uisite green surface, rolling like long waves of the 
sea, and broken at distances of miles by an intervale 
with a small stream, along whose banks are scattered 
trees of elm and cotton-wood. Here and there was a 
"ranch" or farm with cultivated land, but these grew 
rarer and rarer ; the uniform view was one wide roll- 
ing prairie, freshly green, spreading out as far as the 
eye could reach, with the distant fringe of thin forest 
by the water-course, and sending forth and receiving 
the sun at morning and evening, as the ocean seems 
to discharge and accept it when we travel its track- 



SCENES ON THE PLAINS. 33 

less space. No land could be richer ; no sight could 
more deeply impress one with the measureless extent 
of our country, and its unimproved capacities, than 
that of these first two days* ride west from the Mis- 
souri River. 

Then the waves of land ceased ; the soil grew thin 
and dry; a dead level spread before the unresting 
eye ; and we entered upon the region of the Platte 
River and the Plains proper. The streams were few 
and scant, and the water muddy; but wells gave good 
drinking water all along the route, though oftentimes 
they had to be sunk as deep as fifty or seventy-five 
feet. It was too early then (May) for many of the 
prairie flowers ; but the rich, fresh green of the grass 
satisfied the eye. Scattered through it we caught 
frequent glimpses of the prairie hen, multiplying for 
the hunter's harvest in November ; from its bare, last 
year's stalks floated out the liquid music of the larks ; 
the plover, paired as in Paradise, and never divorced 
even in this western country of easy virtue and cheap 
legislation, bobbed up and down their long necks, or 
fluttered their wide wings in flight at every rod ; little 
blackbirds accompanied us in great flocks ; a lean, hun- 
gry-looking wolf stole along at a distance, with one eye 
on us and the other on the carcass of a horse or ox, 
dropped in sickness or fatigue from some passing train ; 
away off" near the horizon scampered, most daintily 
and provokingly, a half-dozen antelopes, — too near for 
restful palates, too far for waiting rifles ; and over all 
and illuminating all floated an atmosphere so pure, so 
rare, so ethereal, as pictured every object with a pre- 
Raphaelite distinctness, made distant things appear 



34 OUK NEW WEST. 

near, and sent tlie horizon far away in an unbounded 
stretch of slightly rounding green earth. Added to 
these a constant breeze, tempering the sun to a most 
grateful softness, and bearing an inspiring tonic to 
lungs and heart; sunsets and sunrises that rival Italy 
or the Connecticut valley; a twilight prolonged as 
in England ; and a dryness and purity to the atmos- 
phere that is certainly not known in New England, 
and guards the most exposed against colds, — and the 
reader may form some idea of the life of our senses 
and sensibilities in our stage ride over the Plains. 

One great feature in the constant landscape was 
the long trains of wagons and carts, with their teams 
of mules and oxen, passing to and fro on the road, 
going in empty, coming out laden with corn for man 
and beast, with machinery for the mining regions, 
with clothing, food and luxuries for the accumulating 
populations of Colorado, Utah and Montana, and all 
intermediate settlements. The wagons were covered 
with white cloth ; each drawn by four to six pairs of 
mules or oxen ; and the trains of them stretched fre- 
quently from one-quarter to one-third of a mile each. 
As they moved along in the distance, they reminded 
me of the caravans described in the Bible and other 
ancient Eastern books. Turned out of the road on 
the green prairie, for afternoon rest or a night's re- 
pose, the wagons drawn around in a circle, as a barri- 
cade against Indians or protection against storm, and 
the animals turned loose to feed, and wandering over 
the rounding prairie for a mile, — " cattle upon a thou- 
sand hills ; " at night their camp fires burning ; — in 
any position or under any asjpect, they presented a 



A STORM ON THE PLAINS. 35 

picture most unique and impressive, indeed, summon- 
ing up many a memory of oriental reading. The mule 
trains made from fifteen to twenty miles a day; and 
the oxen about twelve to fifteen. They depended 
entirely upon the grass of the Plains for food as they 
went along; and indeed the animals grew stronger 
and fatter as they moved on in their summer cam- 
paign of work, coming out of their winter rest poor 
and scrawny, and going back into it in the fall, fat 
and hearty. It was thus that, before the Kailroad, all 
emigration and all merchandise moved into our great 
New West. 

Another of our marked early experiences was a ter- 
rible storm of thunder and lightning, hail and rain, upon 
the open Plains. First came huge, rolling, ponderous 
masses of cloud in the West, massing up and separating 
into sections in a more majestic and threatening style 
than our party had ever before seen in the heavens. 
Then followed a tornado of wind. Horses, coach and 
escort turned their backs to the breeze, and, bending, 
awaited its passing. It stripped us of every loose bit of 
baggage ; and we sent our scouts for their recovery. 
Next fell the hail, pouring as swift rain, and as large 
and heavy as bullets. The horses quailed before its 
terrible pain. Our splendid quartette of blacks ca- 
reered and started over the prairie ; we tumbled out 
of the coach to save ourselves one peril, and so met 
the other, — the fire of the heavenly hail; it bit like 
wasps, it stunned like blows. But horses and coach 
were to be saved ; and after a long struggle, in which 
the coach came near overturning, and the horses to 
running away, in dismay and fright, and our driver 



36 OUR NEW WEST. 

and military friends proved themselves real heroes, 
and everybody got wet, the hail subsided into a pour- 
ing rain, the horses were quieted and restored to their 
places, and we got into a drowned coach, ourselves 
like drowned rats, and hastened to cover, over a prai- 
rie flooded with water, in the barracks of old Fort 
Kearney. 

From Monday to Saturday, day and night, stopping 
every ten or twelve miles to change horses, and every 
forty or fifty to eat a meal, were we upon this stage 
ride over the Plains. The days were warm and mo- 
notonous; the nights cold and tedious; sleep in a 
jolting stage-coach was hard and fitful; and we fast 
grew careless in toilettes and barbaric in manners. 
We were alert for an Indian attack, but none ap- 
peared; and not even buffalo or antelope gave us 
opportunity to test our vaunted prowess with fire- 
arms. We had a wide and smooth road; an occa- 
sional gully or dry ditch offered the only break in its 
uniform levelness, and a rare stretch of sand inter- 
rupted its hardness ; it seemed easy, with light coach 
and frequent change of horses, to keep up a speed of 
eight to ten miles ; but the average rate of the 
coaches, with heavy mails and full loads of passen- 
gers, was but four to six. The road lay for the most 
part along the Platte River, — a broad, shallow, swift 
and muddy stream ; useful then and now only for 
drinking purposes, but destined to flow out in side 
ditches and make almost a second Nile Valley in agri- 
cultural richness. The soil of the Plains is a cold, 
dry, sandy loam, the wash of the great range of 
mountains beyond them; yielding a rich though 



THE EANCHES ON" THE PLAINS. 37 

coarse grass, that, green or dry, is the best food for 
cattle that the Continent can offer. From the river 
to the mountains, there is a steady though imper- 
ceptible rise in the land, averaging ten feet to the 
mile ; half way across, dew ceases to fall, and at Den- 
ver and Cheyenne, where the mountains begin, the 
Plains bear an elevation of near six thousand feet 
above the sea level. 

This whole intermediate region was and still is sub- 
stantially uninhabited; every ten or fifteen miles 
was a stable of the stage proprietor, and every other 
ten or fifteen miles, an eating-house ; perhaps as often 
a petty ranch or farm-house, whose owner lived by 
selling hay to the trains of emigrants or freighters ; 
every fifty or one hundred miles we found a small 
grocery and blacksmith shop ; and about as fre- 
quently a military station with a company or two 
of United States troops for protection against the 
Indians. This made up all the civilization of the 
Plains. The barns and houses were of logs or prai- 
rie turf, piled up layer on layer, and smeared over or 
between with clayey mud. The turf and mud made 
the best houses, and the same material was used for 
military forts and for fences around the cattle and horse 
yards. The roofs were often a foot thickness of turfs, 
sand, clay and logs or twigs, with an occasional in- 
side lining of skins or thick cloth. Floors were often- 
est such as nature offers only ; and, as at some of the 
Washington hotels, the spoons at the table did not 
always go around. Mexican terms prevailed : an in- 
closure for animals was called a "corral;" a house of 
turf and mud is of "adobe;" and a farm-house or 



38 OUR NEW WEST. 

farm a " rancli." Our meals at the stage stations con- 
tinued very good throughout the ride; the staples 
were bacon, eggs, hot biscuit, green tea and coffee; 
dried peaches and apples, and pies were as uniform ; 
beef and antelope were occasional, and canned fruits 
and vegetables were furnished at least half of the 

time. 

As we went on, and the Plains grew more barren, 
the prickly pear and the sage bush became plenty in 
their tough unfruitfulness ; the road was marked more 
frequently with the carcasses of oxen and horses, — 
scarcely ever were we out of sight of their bleaching 
bones; and occasionally the pathos of a human grave 
gave a deeper touch to our thoughts of death upon the 
Plains, deepened, too, by the knowledge that the wolf 
would soon violate its sanctity, and scatter the sacred 
bones of father, mother or child over the waste prairie. 
The wiser instinct of the Indian showed itself, once 
in a while, in the sepulture of his kindred above 
ground; for, rolling his dead in a blanket, he places 
the body in mid-air between two forked poles, six or 
eight feet high, and so, if not poised for an upward 
flight, it is at least safe from vulgar profanation. 
Anon we grew gay over the lively little prairie 
dogs, looking half rat and half squirrel, as they scam- 
pered through the grass, or dove, with a low, chirrup- 
ing bark, back into their holes. These animals are 
smaller and more contemptible than I had expected ; 
their holes, marked by a hillock of sand, are congre- 
gated in villages, sometimes extending a quarter or 
half a mile along the roadside. Only a pair occupy 
each hole, but we hear the same story, which earlier 



PERSONAL SKETCHES — MR. COLFAX. 39 

travelers record for us, that a snake and an owl share 
their homes with them. The snakes we did not see ; 
but the owl, a species no larger than a robin, solemn, 
stiff and straight, stood guard at many of the holes. 
The water at last showed its bitter alkali taint; and 
we passed through a patch where the soda deposits 
whitened the soil, and so poisoned the springs, that 
for man or beast to drink, after fresh solutions by a 
rain, was dread danger of death. Fremont Spring, an 
oasis in this desert, gains its name from the discovery 
and use of it by the gallant captain, who almost first 
introduced this country to public acquaintance; and 
we found it pure and sweet, with an original sulphur- 
ous smack. 

In the long reaches of this slow coach ride, and 
thus early in the experiences and observations that 
we are all to share together, there are at least two of 
our traveling party that I am justified in introducing 
personally to my readers. These are Mr. Colfax and 
Governor Bross, for they are of public renown, and 
their presence has made these journeys very much 
affairs of politics and government. The one distinc- 
tion of the former, perhaps, is that he has more per- 
sonal friends, — people who, whether they have ever 
seen him or not, feel a personal attachment to and 
interest in hinj, — than any other public man in the 
country. He is more than the Henry Clay of this 
generation; for the love and respect borne towards 
him are not confined to his political party, as that of 
Mr. Clay practically was. A member of Congress 
now for fourteen years ; the Speaker of its House for 
six; and elevated from that, the third, to the second 



40 OUR NEW WEST. 

political station in our government, — the Yice-Presi- 
dency, — he stands before the country one of its fresh- 
est yet one of its ripest, one of its most useful, and 
certainly one of its most popular and promising public 
men. But this is not all, nor the best of the man. 
He is not one of those to whom distance lends en- 
chantment; he grows near to you, as you get near to 
him; and it is, indeed, by his personal qualities of 
character, by his simplicity, frankness, genuine good 
nature, and entire devotedness to what he considers 
right, that he has principally gained and holds so large 
a place in the personal esteem of the nation and upon 
its public arena. Mr. Colfax is short, say five feet 
six, weighs one hundred and forty-five, is in the prime 
of life, forty-five years, has brownish hair and light 
blue eyes, is lately married, after a long widowerhood, 
drinks no intoxicating liquors, smokes almost as much 
as General Grant, is tough as a knot, was bred a prin- 
ter and editor, but gave up the business for public 
life, and was the idol of South Bend and all adjacen- 
cies before he became that of the country at large. 
There are no rough points about him; kindliness is 
the law of his nature ; — while he is never backward 
in differing from others, nor in sustaining his views 
by arguments and by votes, he never is personally 
harsh in utterance, nor unkind in feeling, and he can 
have no enemies but those of politics, and most of 
these find it impossible to cherish any personal ani- 
mosity to him. In tact, he is unbounded, and with 
him it is a gift of nature, not a studied art; and this 
is perhaps one of the chief secrets of his success in 
life. His industry is equally exhaustless; — he is al- 



GOVERNOR BROSS. 41 

ways at work, reading, writing, talking, seeing, study- 
ing, — I can not conceive of a single unprogressive, 
unimproved hour in all his life. He is not of brilliant 
or showy intellectual qualities, not a genius, as we 
ordinarily apply that slippery word; but the absence 
of this is more than compensated by these other qual- 
ities I have mentioned, — his great good sense, his 
quick, intuitive perception of truth, and his inflexible 
adherence to it, his high personal integrity, and his 
long and valuable training in the service of the people 
and the government ; and in any position or capacity, 
even the highest, he is sure to serve the country 
faithfully and well. He is one of the men to be tena- 
ciously kept in public life; and I have no doubt he 
will be. Some people talk of him for President; but 
his own ambition is wisely tempered by the purpose 
to perform present duties well. He certainly makes 
friends more rapidly and holds them more closely 
than any public man I ever knew; wherever he goes, 
the women love him, and the men cordially respect 
him; and he is pretty sure to be always a personal 
favorite, as now, with the people at large. 

The other official of the party, Lieutenant-Gov- 
ernor Bross of Illinois, is indeed our paterfamilias, our 
"governor." Hale and hearty in body and mind; 
ripe with fifty-six years and a wide experience and 
culture in school, college and journalism ; cheery in 
temperament, enjoying rough, out-door life like a true 
unspoiled child of Nature ; sturdy in high principles ; 
unaffected and simple in manners and feeling as a 
child ; a ready and most popular stump speaker ; en- 
thusiastic for all novel experience, we all give him 



42 OUR NEW WEST. 

our heartiest sympathy and respect, and constitute 
him the leader of the party. Our best foot, we al- 
ways put him foremost, whether danger, or dignity, 
or fun is the order of the occasion. Governor Bross 
was born in New Jersey, — and so says he never can 
be president, as the Constitution requires that officer 
to be a native of the nation ; lumbered on the Sus- 
quehannah; went through Williams College, Massa- 
chusetts; taught school in Franklin and Berkshire 
counties of the same State ; continued a teacher and 
married in New York ; and, following the star of em- 
pire, went to Chicago, and entering on the editorial 
profession, has gone on from small to great things, 
until he is now the senior editor and proprietor of 
the leading journal of the North-west, and has been 
for four years the second officer in the State govern- 
ment of Illinois. 

There were beauties of character that the world 
little recks among the other members of our travel- 
ing party; but their place of honor is the private 
station ; and I may not rob it of their secrets even as 
example for a needy generation. Besides, — now, the 
morning sun lights up the mountains, and the long 
embattlement of snow and rock rises abruptly in the 
distance to end the Plains, and marshal in new scenery 
and new experiences. No vision could be more grand 
and imposing, — none was more welcome to eyes, weary 
with the monotony of plains and tired with a week's 
sleepless travel. From Long's Peak in the north 
to Pike's Peak in the south, — a full hundred miles 
of mountains, continental in position, continental in 
bight and breadth and majesty, — spread before our 



DENVER. 43 

eyes and lifted us up from selves to a new conception 
of the Infinite. The roll and richness of prairie began 
again as we neared the mountains, and their waters 
flowed out freer and purer in different directions. And 
soon we exchanged greetings with Denver, under the 
shadows of the hills, the commercial and political 
capital of Colorado. 



ni. 

THE PACIFIC EAILEOAD. 

The Story of the Pacific Railroad — The Pullman Cars — Omaha and 
Council Bluffs — Over the Plains by Rail — Cheyenne — The Mountain 
Pass and its various Revelations of Plain, Desert and Mountain — 
The Architecture of Wind, Rain and Sand — Echo and Weber Can- 
yons — Around Salt Lake and Across the Great Interior Basin — 
Scenes along the Route — Up and over the Sierra Nevadas — Donner 
Lake — The Greatest Triumph in Railroad Building in the World — 
Through California — The Continental Railroad Reviewed and Sum- 
med up — ^Its Beginning, its Execution and its Results. 

So completely is the Pacific Kailroad henceforth 
the key to all our New West ; so thoroughly must all 
knowledge of the characteristics of the latter radiate 
out from the former as a central line, that its story 
should be told almost at the outset, even to the antici- 
pation of earlier experiences. Marked, indeed, was the 
contrast between the stage ride of 1865 and the Eail- 
road ride of 1868 across the Plains. The then long- 
drawn, tedious endurance of six days and nights, 
running the gauntlet of hostile Indians, was now 
accomplished in a single twenty-four hours, safe in 
a swiftly-moving train, and in a car that was an ele- 
gant drawing-room by day and a luxurious bedroom 
at night. 



46 OUR NEW WEST. 

The long lines of travel in our wide and fresh West 
have given birth to more luxurious accommodations 
for passengers than exist in Europe or the Atlantic 
States. With the organization of travel over the 
Pacific Kailroad come cars that will carry their occu- 
pants through from New York to San Francisco, with- 
out stop or change, and with excellent bed and board 
within them. Only America could have demanded, 
conceived and organized for popular use such accom- 
modations as the Pullman Palace and Sleeping Cars 
of the West. To some, as to ours, are added the 
special luxury of a house organ ; and the passengers 
while away the tedious hours of long rides over 
unvarying prairies with music and song. 

Omaha, in 1865, a feeble rival of Atchison, Leaven- 
worth and Nebraska City in outfitting emigrant and 
merchandise wagons for Colorado and Utah, and with- 
out a single mile of railroad within one hundred miles, 
has already become the greatest railroad center of the 
Missouri and Mississippi Valleys. It is the starting- 
point of the Pacific Kailroad, which stretches a com- 
pleted line of eighteen hundred miles west to the 
Pacific Ocean; to the east are two or three com- 
pleted lines of five hundred miles across Iowa and 
Illinois to Chicago, and others are in progress; to 
the south are open roads to St. Louis across Missouri ; 
and to the north is a finished road to Sioux City, and 
fast stretching on to St. Paul. The three great States 
of the Mississippi Valley, Illinois, Iowa and Missouri, 
the garden and granary of the nation, and seat of its 
middle empire, are slashed in all directions by rail- 
road lines, completed or rapidly constructing, meet- 



THE RAILROAD Olif THE PLAINS. 49 

ino: as a western focus at Omaha and Council Bluffs, 
sister towns on either bank of the Missouri, and con- 
verging on the east into either Chicago or St. Louis. 
Their consequent development, in population and 
wealth, is perhaps the most wonderful illustration of 
modern American growth. It is within this area that 
New England is pouring the best of her emigration, 
and reproducing herself, in energy and industry and 
intelligence, on a broader, more generous and more 
national basis. 

Council Bluffs, on the Iowa bank of the Missouri 
River, opened the year 1869 with eight thousand in- 
habitants, having erected thirteen hundred new build- 
ings in 1868, while Omaha, opposite, counted nearly 
double that number. In both cases the railroads cen- 
ter upon the bottom lands, but the beautiful bluffs 
back and above invite the living areas of the towns. 
Council Bluffs is almost hidden amid the folding circles 
of its hills, and has the fascination of mysteries in the 
distance ; but Omaha stands out with bolder and more 
even front upon a grand amphitheater over the river. 
Besides the railroads, these towns have a river navi- 
gation two thousand miles north into Montana and to 
the British line, and two thousand miles south to 
New Orleans and the Gulf 

Out now upon the continental Railroad. For five 
hundred miles, a straight, level line, across the broad 
Plains, along the valley of the Platte. It was but 
play to build a railroad here. Yet there is a steady 
ascent of ten feet to the mile; and for the first two 
hundred miles the country has the exquisite roll and 
the active fertility of the Iowa and Illinois prairies. 



50 OUE NEW WEST. 

Through this region the growth of Nebraska shares 
that of those two States ; and she has the advantage 
of them, generally, in climate, in water, and in wood. 
But beyond this limit, — out upon the real Plains, — 
the first results of the Kailroad are to kill what settle- 
ment and cultivation they had reached under the 
patronage of slow-moving emigration, stage-travel, 
and prairie-schooner freightage. The ranches which 
these supported are now deserted; the rails carry 
everybody and everything; the old roads are sub- 
stantially abandoned; the old settlers, losing all their 
improvements and opportunities, gather in at the rail- 
way stations, or move backwards or forwards to greater 
local developments. They are the victims, in turn, 
of a higher civilization; they drove out the Indian, 
the wolf, and the buffalo; the locomotive whistles 
their occupation away; and invites back for the time 
the original occupants. 

The day's ride grows monotonous. The road is as 
straight as an arrow. Every dozen or fifteen miles is 
a station, — two or three sheds, and a water-spout and 
wood-pile; every one hundred miles or so a home or 
division depot, with shops, eating-house, "saloons" 
uncounted, a store or two, a few cultivated acres, and 
the invariable half-a-dozen seedy, staring loafers, that 
are a sort of fungi indigenous to American railways. 
We yawn over the unchanging landscape and the un- 
varying model of the stations, and lounge and read 
by day, and go to bed early at night. But the clear, 
dry air charms ; the half dozen soldiers hurriedly mar- 
shalled into line at each station, as the train comes 
up, suggest that the Indian question is not disposed 



CHETE:ra"E. 51 

of yet; we catch a glimpse of antelopes in tlie dis- 
tance ; and we watch the holes of the prairie dogs for 
their piquant little owners and their traditional com- 
panions of owls and snakes, — but never see the snakes. 
The Plains proper and the first day's ride end at 
Cheyenne, five hundred and sixteen miles from Oma- 
ha. Here a branch road goes oJ0f south a hundred 
miles to Denver, where it connects with the St. Louis 
or Eastern Division of the Pacific road. Cheyenne is 
also a great railroad work and supply shop, as be- 
comes its location adjoining the mountain and winter- 
exposed section of the road. It was the first of the 
towns created by the advance of the road to assume 
permanency and importance; and though Denver 
watches its growth with some jealousy, there is no 
real rivalry between them. Well located on the open 
Plains, watered by fresh streams from the near moun- 
tains, it has the secure elements of agricultural wealth 
around it, and in a brief first year took on the or- 
ganization and completion of a first-class Western 
town, with several thousand inhabitants, daily papers, 
stores, taverns, and all the luxuries and many of the 
comforts of civilization. A hight of six thousand feet 
gives it a share of mountain air, and a climate but a 
degree rougher than that of Denver, which is more 
like that of St. Louis and Philadelphia, with greater 
dryness, than like the top of Mount Washington in 
New Hampshire, with whose altitude both Denver and 
Cheyenne correspond. The new Territory of Wyom- 
ing depends on Cheyenne at present for its chief im- 
portance ; but the town lies so near to Colorado that 
the latter half claims it. 



52 OUR NEW WEST. 

The second or Eockj Mountain section of five hun- 
dred miles of the Kailroad track, — from Cheyenne to 
Ogden in the Salt Lake Yalley, — divides itself again 
into three peculiar portions. The first of one hun- 
dred and fifty miles mounts up a rapidly ascending 
plain, — for nature has smoothed down the mountains 
for an easy path, — to the crest of the Black Hills, 
the outermost line of the continental mountains. In 
thirty-two miles, the track ascends over two thousand 
feet, but so uniformly that the grade is nowhere over 
eighty feet to the mile, and at Sherman or Evans's 
Pass it is eight thousand two hundred and sixty-two 
feet above the sea level, which is the highest point 
the road has to run in all its line. But this is not the 
continental divide, and all this section is through an 
open, half-plain country. The ruins of the old moun- 
tain tops stand around in grotesque, individual forms ; 
away in the far distance rise the unmoved ranges; 
but along our path, winding to escape an occasional 
hill, is a compact red granite gravel, that upturned to 
plow and scraper, and has made a model bed for the 
sleepers and the rails. 

Descending by easy grade a thousand feet or so, 
the road enters broader areas, and we recognize the 
Laramie Plains ; a repetition of the elevated Parks of 
Colorado. These are fifty miles by one hundred in 
extent, being seven thousand to eight thousand feet 
high, with trout-brooks in adjoining and embraced 
hills, and, in the summer, most strongly inviting the 
weary traveler, the sportsman or the invalid to linger 
for days and weeks. They were famous hunting- 
grounds for the Indians; agreeable resting-places for 



THE QUAINT ARCHITECTURE OF NATURE. 53 

the emigrant caravans of old ; and long the chief out- 
post of the army in the mountain region. The Rail- 
road makes a division station here, and a town of 
some importance seems likely to grow up. 

The country grows more broken and less interest- 
ing as this section of one hundred and fifty miles 
comes to an end at the crossing of the North Platte. 
But up to this point the ride from Cheyenne pos- 
sesses the greatest novelty and charm for the fresh 
traveler. The senses all dilate with w^hat is spread 
before and around him; rich black mountains bound 
the horizon north and south; a dash of snow on peak 
or side occasionally enlivens the view and deepens 
the coloring; along our pathway are fine valleys or 
broader plains, rich in grass and flowers ; nature has 
fashioned it for a railroad ; scattered around in vallev 
or plain, as the track approaches the summit, are 
monuments of rock, grotesquely or symmetrically ar- 
ranged; here a wall as if for a bulwark, there the 
ruin of cathedral or fort, again a half-finished build- 
ing, anon the fashion of a huge, dismasted screw 
steamer, with paddle astern and pilot-boat ahead; 
over all an atmosphere so pure that the eye seems 
to take in all space, and so dry and exhilarating that 
life titillates at every avenue, and we mount as if on 
angel's wrings. Here would seem to be the fountain 
of health ; and among these upper hills and plains ad- 
joining the Railroad is surely to be many a summer 
resort for the invalid and the pleasure-seeker in the 
by no means distant future. 

The middle of the mountain sections, — a second 
one hundred and fifty miles, — begins with the North 



54 OUE NEW WEST. 

Platte and stretches to Green Eiver. It is a sad con- 
trast to its predecessor. No living streams are found 
in it; few living springs have been discovered; and 
in building the Railroad through it, water had to be 
brought up from behind, not only for the workmen 
and animals to drink, but for the locomotives to make 
steam with. The water found on or near the surface 
is unfit for either purpose; but deep wells will prob- 
ably in the future relieve this difficulty. A high, 
rolling, desert country is this, with scarcely any vege- 
tation but the rank, coarse sage bush, and the soil a 
fine, alkali-laden dust. To all slow-traveling emigrant 
trains and stage passengers, this region is a memor- 
able pain. The eye has no joy, the lips no comfort 
through it; the sun burns by day, the cold chills at 
night; the fine, impalpable, poisonous dust chokes 
and chafes and chaps you everywhere. The sage 
bush is a vulgar exaggeration of our garden sage; 
growing rugged and rough from one to three feet 
high; dry and strong and repulsive; yet through 
such wastes as this, mules and cattle sometimes eat 
it, because they must or die, and it does make quick, 
hot fire for the emigrants* and wagon-drivers' kettles. 
But think of savoring your food with soap and sage 
tea; think of putting a soap factory and an apothe- 
cary shop into one room, and that your kitchen ! 

Within this desert of the mountains, the divide of 
the Continent occurs both on the old stage road and the 
new Railroad line; and here, in the summer of 1868, 
we witnessed the building of the track over the part- 
ing of the waters. The last rail on the Atlantic slope 
and the first on the Pacific were laid in our presence ; 



HOW THE TEACK WAS LAID. 55 

and Governor Bross pinned them down with stalwart 
blows upon their spikes. As yet, still, no mountains 
appear in the path of the track, and it winds easily 
along through these rolling sand-hills, occasionally 
helped over a deep dry gulch, and spanning a feeble 
or possible river. But the whole section is mountain- 
ously high, from seven thousand to eight thousand 
feet above the sea level. 

We witnessed here the fabulous speed with which the 
Railroad was built. Through the two or three hun- 
dred miles beyond were scattered ten to fifteen thou- 
sand men in great gangs preparing the road bed ; 
plows, scrapers, shovels, picks and carts ; and, among 
the rocks, drills and powder were doing the grading as 
rapidly as men could stand and move with their tools. 
Long trains brought up to the end of the completed 
track loads of ties and rails ; the former were trans- 
ferred to teams, sent one or two miles ahead, and put in 
place upon the grade. Then rails and spikes were re- 
loaded on platform cars, these pushed up to the last 
previously laid rail, and with an automatic movement 
and a celerity that were wonderful, practiced hands 
dropped the fresh rails one after another on the ties 
exactly in line, huge sledges sent the spikes home, 
the car rolled on, and the operation was repeated; 
while every few minutes the long heavy train behind 
sent out a puff from its locomotive, and caught up 
with its load of material the advancing work. The 
only limit, inside of eight miles in twenty-four hours, 
to the rapidity with which the track could thus be 
laid, was the power of the road behind to bring for- 
ward the materials. 



56 OUR NEW WEST. 

As the Railroad marched thus rapidly across 
the broad Continent of plain and mountain, there 
was improvised a rough and temporary town at its 
every public stopping-place. As this was changed 
every thirty or forty days, these settlements were 
of the most perishable materials, — canvas tents, 
plain board shanties, and turf-hovels, — pulled down 
and sent forward for a new career, or deserted as 
worthless, at every grand movement of the Railroad 
company. Only a small proportion of their popula- 
tions had aught to do with the road, or any legiti- 
mate occupation. Most were the hangers-on around 
the disbursements of such a gigantic work, catching 
the drippings from the feast in any and every form 
that it was possible to reach them. Restaurant and 
saloon keepers, gamblers, desperadoes of every grade, 
the vilest of men and of women made up this "Hell 
on Wheels," as it was most aptly termed. 

When we were on the line, this congregation of 
scum and wickedness was within the Desert section, 
and was called Benton. One to two thousand men, 
and a dozen or two women were encamped on the 
alkali plain in tents and board shanties ; not a tree, 
not a shrub, not a blade of grass was visible ; the dust 
ankle deep as we walked through it, and so fine and 
volatile that the slightest breeze loaded the air with 
it, irritating every sense and poisoning half of them ; 
a village of a few variety stores and shops, and many 
restaurants and grog-shops ; by day disgusting, by 
night dangerous ; almost everybody dirty, many filthy, 
and with the marks of lowest vice ; averaging a mur- 
der a day ; gambling and drinking, hurdy-gurdy danc- 



THE DESCENT INTO SALT LAKE VALLEY. 57 

ing and the vilest of sexual commerce, the chief busi- 
ness and pastime of the hours, — this was Benton. 
Like its predecessors, it fairly festered in corruption, 
disorder and death, and would have rotted, even in 
this dry air, had it outlasted a brief sixty-day life. 
But in a few weeks its tents were struck, its shanties 
razed, and with their dwellers moved on fifty or a 
hundred miles farther to repeat their life for another 
brief day. Where these people came from originally; 
where they went to when the road was finished, and 
their occupation was over, were both puzzles too in- 
tricate for me. Hell would appear to have been 
raked to furnish them; and to it they must have 
naturally returned after graduating here, fitted for 
its highest seats and most diabolical service. 

The country changes for the better as the road 
crosses Green River, and enters upon the third sec- 
tion of the Mountain Pass, which ends with the Salt 
Lake Valley at Ogden. Nothing on the whole line, 
unless it be the passage over the Sierra Nevadas in 
California, rivals this section in grand and pictur- 
esque scenery. It has also, with the same exception, 
been the hardest part of the road to build; for here 
are real mountain ranges to be^ crossed, to be scaled 
and to be descended, in order to reach the Salt Lake 
Basin. Deep cuts, heavy embankments, numerous 
tunnels are found in the pathway of the track. But 
at first, we pass through long troughs, like beds of 
departed rivers, with mountain walls on either bank, 
often bearing most unique forms, models for the archi- 
tect, puzzles for the brain of artist. High winds, heavy 
rains, and columns of swiftly moving and revolving 



58 OUR NEW WEST. 

sand appear to have been at work among these hills 
to waste and to reconstruct. Tall, isolated rocks, sur- 
mounting a hill, sometimes round, but always even 
and smooth as if work of finest chisel; immense col- 
umns and fantastic figures upon the walls of rock that 
line a valley for miles ; solitary mountains upon the 
plain, fashioned like a fortress, or rising like Gothic 
cathedral, and called huttes (a French word signifying 
isolated hill or mountain), separated from their family 
in some great convulsion of nature ; long lines of 
rock embankment, one above another, formed some- 
times into squares like a vast fort, and again running 
along for miles, a hundred feet above the valley, look- 
ing like the most perfect of railroad embankments, 
with an open breach occasionally for a water-course, 
— these are some of the labors of these architects of 
nature, and with details indescribable and ever pic- 
turesque, they will be a constant excitement and in- 
spiration to the traveler. 

One of the most curious and famous of these grand 
fantastic shapes on the route is the " Church Butte." 
It lies directly by the old stage road, and not far from 
the Kailroad track. At a distance, it looms up on 
the level plain, a huge, ill-shapen hill; near by, it 
appears the most marvelous counterfeit of a half- 
ruined, gigantic, old-world Gothic cathedral, that can 
be imagined. We stopped before it just as the sun 
had gone down in the west, and as the full moon 
came up the eastern horizon, and the soft, contrasting 
lights, deepening slowly into shadowy dimness, gave 
exquisite development to the manifold shapes and the 
beautiful and picturesque outlines, that rock and clay 



THE WIND AND THE SAND. 69 

had assumed. The Milan or the Cologne cathedral, 
worn with centuries, ill-shapen with irregular decay, 
could not have looked more the things they are or 
would be, than this did. Everything belonging to 
the idea was there in some degree of preservation. 
Porch, nave, transept, steeple, broken columns, bent 
roof, caryatides, monster animals, saints and apostles, 
with departed nose or foot, worn and crumbling fea- 
tures, were all in their places, or a little out, but 
recognizable and nameable. We walked around this 
vast natural cathedral of sandstone and clay, — a full 
half mile, — and greater grew our wonder, our enthu- 
siasm. Flowing out from the Butte on all sides was 
a thick, solid stream of fine stone and clay, that told 
how the work was done, how it was going on still, 
refining, pointing, carving, chiseling, but gradually 
and surely leveling, as all mountains, the world over, 
are being leveled, and the whole surface of the globe 
making into one vast plain. 

The share which the high winds and the sand they 
take up and blow with powerful force in right lines, 
and in curves, and in whirls, have in this great work, 
both of construction and destruction, is such as can 
hardly be realized by those who have not experienced 
or witnessed them. Sand showers or sand whirlpools 
are of almost daily occurrence in these high central 
regions of the Continent. They load the atmosphere 
with sand; they carry it everywhere; among rocks, 
into houses, through walls, into the bodies of every- 
thing animate and inanimate, and there keep it at its 
work of revolution. There is a window amono: the 
mountains of Colorado that a single storm of this sort 



60 OUR NEW WEST. 

has changed from common glass into the most per- 
fect of ground glass; and the fantastic architecture 
of its creation among the rocks of the country, from 
the North Platte to Fort Bridger, can only be under- 
stood and appreciated by being seen. 

Soon, passing over crests of mountains, amid patches 
of snow and fields of yellow flowers, — such contrasts 
were offered us in June, — the road seeks its way into 
the Salt Lake Yalley by Echo and Weber Canyons. 
These, their approaches and their connections, are 
variously wonderful regions. Narrow gorges them- 
selves, with towering walls of rock on each side, nar- 
rower gorges open out from them, and lead up among 
timber and to mountain tops. Streams, pure and 
lively, course through them, seeking home in the mys- 
tery of Salt Lake. Wherever the valley is bold enough 
to widen, fertile meadows gladden the eye, and Mor- 
mon thrift and Mormon polygamy begin to show their 
results. More women and children than men are a 
new and strange sight in this far-away country. 

Out from the rugged Weber Canyon, the road 
comes plumply into the Salt Lake Valley, and at 
Ogden, a branch connects the main line with the 
capital city of the saints, thirty-nine miles distant. 
But here we are among the most prosperous farming 
settlements of Utah; and following the central road 
up the valley to reach the northern point of Salt 
Lake, we see Mormon civilization in villages and 
farms, for forty or fifty miles or more. Crossing Bear 
River near its mouth in Salt Lake, whence the stages 
for Montana will in future start from the Railroad, 
the line passes out of the Salt Lake or Wahsatch 



AROUND SALT LAKE — HUMBOLDT EIYER. 63 

Valley, and in skirting the lake, has to attack and 
mount the Promontory Mountains that come sharply 
down into the lake from the north. Here at Prom- 
ontory Point, the two companies, the Central Pacific 
and the Union Pacific, one building from the west 
and the other from the east, joined their tracks, and 
completed the grand Continental Railroad. 

Continuing west, the road completes the northern 
circuit of the lake through a desert region, and goes 
out towards Nevada with uninviting surroundings. 
Pilot Peak, in the Ombre Mountains, is the first 
noticeable feature in the landscape ; lying twelve to 
fifteen miles south of the Railroad, it commands a 
grand view of all the Salt Lake country and the 
desert north and west of the water. The general 
line of the road from Salt Lake to the Sierra Ne- 
vadas is along a high trough of rolling desert country, 
with occasional narrow fertile meadows ; to the north 
high volcanic table-lands that intervene between it 
and the waters of the Columbia ; to the south the 
mountain ranges of Nevada, and their almost equally 
barren valleys, that come to their northern ends here. 
The Humboldt River begins one hundred and forty 
miles west of Salt Lake, in Humboldt Wells, where 
the East Humboldt Mountains, the chief of the Ne- 
vada ranges, taper down into the trough. Here are 
several hundred acres of good meadow land, rich with 
springs, and capable of large crops of grass. The 
East Humboldt range is the backbone, as it were, of 
the Great Interior Basin, and some of its peaks are 
eleven thousand and twelve thousand feet high, and 
carry their snow caps through the year. 



64 OUR NEW WEST. 

From the source of the Humboldt, the road follows 
the river for near three hundred miles to its sink. 
The stream is for the most part sluggish and muddy, 
with but a narrow fringe of arable land. A few 
ranches, raising hay and barley, flourish in favored 
spots; but there can be no very extensive farming 
through the valley without irrigation. An occasional 
kindred stream comes into the Humboldt from out 
the hills, north and south. One from the north is 
known as Maggie Creek, so named for a sweet little 
Scotch girl, who was a pet of one of the emigrant 
parties that crossed the country by this route many 
years ago. Up its valley lies the nearest available route 
to Idaho from the California end of the main road, 
and Carlin, the village at the junction, has hopes of a 
future. Near by, the South Fork of the Humboldt, its 
main tributary, comes down out of the East Humboldt 
range, and up this lies the stage route to the new min- 
ing regions of South-eastern Nevada at White Pine and 
Pahranagat, the former one hundred and forty miles 
distant, and possibly the route for a cross or branch rail- 
road to Southern Utah and Nevada and Northern Ari- 
zona, there connecting with the future southern conti- 
nental road. Near the Kailroad in this region, too, is a 
favorable specimen of the hot springs that abound all 
through the Interior Basin country. It seems to lie 
in the basin of an old crater, on top of a knoll fifty 
feet high from the river, and fills a mammoth pool, one 
hundred and fifty feet long by seventy-five wide, with 
water as hot as the hand can bear it, and afibrding a 
most delicious bath. Farther on west, the road passes 
the foot of Reese River Valley, ninety miles up which 



THE DESERT OF THE TRUCKEE. 65 

lies Austin, in Central Nevada, the second most famous 
mining settlement of the State, and near its center. 

Approaching its end, the Humboldt River passes 
between the West Humboldt Mountains on the south 
and the Trinity on the north, both which have for 
several years been the more hopeful than successful 
theaters of considerable mining operations. Those of 
the Trinity have proven the more fruitful of the two ; 
and Orcana is their central settlement. At the end 
of the West Humboldt range is another broad Park, 
known as Lassens' meadows, and similar to those of 
Humboldt Wells at the beginning. Leaving the Hum- 
boldt River to run south and waste itself in the sands 
of the valley, the Railroad soon turns, more westerly 
into and across another purely arid plain, covered with 
sage bush, varied by white alkali flats, holding but 
little water and that bad; with hot springs here and 
there ; lizards and jackass rabbits the principal inhab- 
itants; no timber save the sparsely scattered nut-pine 
in the higher parts of some of the mountain ranges; 
mountains in view on either hand, picturesque in out- 
line, but bare, brown and dry. Thirty miles of this 
desert of deserts brings the road to Wadsworth on 
the Truckee River, and we taste the fresh waters and 
begin to feel the inspiration of the strong life of the 
Sierra Nevadas. 

The track of the road from Salt Lake to the Truckee 
is on a very uniform elevation of four thousand to five 
thousand feet; the grades are all light, and the work 
of construction was easy. From Wadsworth, it as- 
cends the Truckee Yalley into the mountains, stop- 
ping at Reno to send off a branch of seventeen miles 



66 OUR NEW WEST. 

to Virginia City and Gold Hill, the oldest and largest 
mining towns in Nevada, built up over and by the 
famous Comstock Lode, and beyond to Carson, the 
capital of the state. Near by are the Steamboat 
Springs, where sulphurous waters seethe with threat- 
ening roar just beneath the surface, and find vent 
through little cracks in the earth, pouring forth huge 
volumes of steam and rivulets of boiling water. From 
these, — last illustration of the heat and aridity of the 
desert, — it is a grateful sensation for the traveler to 
get among the grand woods and the bright pure 
waters of the mountains ; and the track mounts 
two thousand feet to the tops of the Sierras (seven 
thousand feet high) in thirty-three miles. Near the 
summit, beautiful lakes adjoin the road, most espe- 
cially Donner Lake, which strongly invite delay for 
the leisurely enjoyment of the grand scenery of the 
upper Sierras. In the days of early emigration, 
Donner Lake was the theater of a sad tragedy. An 
Illinois party were overtaken here by winter and 
snow, lost their way, grew short of provisions, and 
many died from cold and starvation, and the survivors 
only existed on the fiesh of their companions. It is 
difl&cult, amid the summer beauty and sweetness of 
this scene, to call up this thrilling, horrible experi- 
ence, that gave the lake its name, and will forever 
cling to its history. For twenty or thirty miles along 
the summit section, the Kailroad track is covered with 
a stout roof to protect it from the heavy winter snows, 
and this shuts out what the traveler is most eager to 
see. Going down on the California side, the moun- 
tains run off very rapidly; the rivers lie in deep 



THE EOAD OVER THE SIERRAS. 67 

gorges, and cannot well be reached or followed by 
the track; and so the rails are laid along and around 
the more evenly descending ridges out into the val- 
leys, and by winding back and forth on the hill-sides, 
occasionally crossing a deep gorge by majestic span 
of bridge, they manage to get down seven thousand 
feet in one hundred miles, with grades of from sev- 
enty-five to one hundred and sixteen feet. These 
two hundred miles of road, ascending and descending 
the great California range of mountains, are without 
parallel, for so long a distance, in expense and diffi- 
culty of construction, and in variety and magnificence 
of scenery, among the entire railroad system of the 
world. A million dollars in gold was spent for blast- 
ing powder alone in the construction of this section ; 
the average cost of grading was one hundred thou- 
sand dollars a mile; and some single miles cost as 
high as three hundred thousand dollars each. About 
a dozen tunnels carry the track through projecting 
angles or bold hills of rock, and for miles it is fairly 
cut into the solid, perpendicular mountain sides. Con- 
sidering that this mountain range, with all its doubts 
and difficulties and cost of railroad construction, reared 
itself at the very beginning of the whole enterprise on 
the Pacific side, — that it had to be attacked first, the 
courage and the faith of the California pioneers and 
executors of this grand continental roadway, rise to 
the front rank of all the high qualities required and 
put into its perfection ; and in the distribution of his- 
torical honors growing out of it, to them should be 
given the lion's share. 

There is a genuine exhilaration in the scenery of 



68 OUR NEW WEST. 

California, after the long ride through the Great In- 
terior Desert Basin ; along wooded gorges, through 
broad groves, under hill-sides, already green and 
purple with the grape, over rolling meadows, golden 
with grain or brown with the ripened, decaying sea- 
son's grass, into villages dead with the decay of min- 
ing, or alive with the birth of agriculture and manu- 
factures, — for it is thus the Eailroad passes into and 
across California. At Sacramento, its capital, low- 
lying by the river, the center of the great interior 
valleys of the State, rival lines invite the traveler for 
the remnant of his journey to the Coast at San Fran- 
cisco. Steamboats down the river; a short, direct 
railroad to the upper end of San Francisco Bay, leav- 
ing a ferriage of twenty-two miles to the city ; or a 
half-circle sweep of road through Stockton to Oakland, 
across the narrow part of the bay from San Francisco; 
or, adding another circle, by the southern shore of the 
bay, the train passes into the very center of the great 
city of our Pacific Empire. 

There will speedily be other railroads across our 
Continent. The rivalries of sections, the temptations 
of commerce, the necessities of our political system, 
will add at least two more through lines within a 
generation's time. But this, the first, will forever re- 
main the one of history; the one of romance. Its con- 
struction in so short a time was the greatest triumph 
of modern civilization, of all civilization, indeed. The 
work was seriously begun on the California side in 
1864; on the eastern end in 1866; and the early 
part of the year 1869 witnessed its entire completion. 
Considering that its length is over eighteen hundred 



THE ROYAL GOVERNMENT GRANTS. 69 

miles; that much of it lay through an almost un- 
known and unexplored country ; that it crosses two 
great continental ranges of mountains, and almost 
innumerable sub-ranges; that even the feeble cen- 
ters of population along the line were five hundred 
miles apart; that for distances of from two hundred 
to five hundred miles there was no timber for ties ; 
and for distances of fifty to two hundred miles there 
was no water for even drinking uses, and no grass to 
feed animals ; that all the iron for one-half of the road 
had to be shipped around Cape Horn or across the 
Isthmus of Panama, and for the other to be freighted 
across the country from Pennsylvania, — thinking of 
all these elements of delay, difficulty and cost, surely 
neither argument nor rhetoric is necessary to place 
this work in its true proportions and its true rela- 
tions before the world and in the pages of history. 

The generous government grants were of course 
the moving power in this wonderfully rapid work. 
They proved more royal than it was supposed they 
were when made ; but they lay practically unim- 
proved for some three or four years. But when their 
wealth of gift was realized, and the war renewed the 
faith of the capital and liberated the labor of the 
country, the two companies, chartered to execute the 
work, the one beginning in California and moving east, 
and the other on the Missouri Kiver and moving west, 
entered into a race for the completion and posses- 
sion by each of as much of the line and as much of 
the generous government bounty as could be secured. 
Though the California Company began first, the heavy 
labor of grading over their mountains forbade them 



70 OUR NEW WEST. 

to move so rapidly as the Eastern Company, whose 
first five hundred miles were over the open, level 
plain, and whose next three hundred miles had little 
of heavy or expensive work upon it. The result is, 
counting the line from San Francisco to Omaha, that 
the California or Central Pacific Company built about 
seven hundred miles, and the Eastern or Union Pacific 
about eleven hundred miles, and the point of conjunc- 
tion is Salt Lake. The government money bounty 
averaged thirty thousand dollars to the mile, or over 
fifty millions of dollars in all ; while, by its acceptance 
of a second mortgage as security for this, the com- 
panies were enabled to issue and sell an equal amount 
of first mortgage bonds of their own. Thus their cash 
funds to do the work amounted to sixty thousand 
dollars a mile, or over one hundred million dollars in 
all. Despite the expense of construction through so 
new and in some places barren and mo.untainous a 
country, and the waste consequent upon such rapidity, 
the cost has undoubtedly been considerably below this. 
For their boldness and their energy, the men, who 
have performed this great work, have won immense 
fortunes. The direct profits cannot well be less than 
twenty million dollars ; and behind this there remain 
the capital stock of the two companies, whatever it 
may prove to be worth, and the royal land grant of 
half the real estate for twenty miles each side the 
road, or twenty-five millions of acres in all. Besides 
all this, the California Company had direct local aid 
and grants worth four million dollars. Never was an 
enterprise so richly endowed ; never in America so 
grand a speculation as the construction and ownership 



HOW THE RAILKOAD IS BUILT. 71 

of this road. The profits are on a scale with the 
work ; and both are worthy of each other. But even 
the excess of bounty was a good investment for the 
Nation; the time gained, in the completion of the 
road, by such appeal to cupidity, was worth all that 
such excess has taken from the government. And 
the business already seeking the road proves clearly 
enough that, with honor on the part of its managers, 
the loans of the Nation will be returned with interest 
in direct repayment. 

The manner of the construction of this great work 
has been much discussed. With such haste, there 
must have been not only waste, but imperfection and 
incompleteness, in the details. To avoid rocks or hills, 
as well as to increase the distance for which the gov- 
ernment would issue its bonds, circles have also been 
substituted in some places for straight lines. But the 
builders have, after getting ahead with the line, gone 
back to improve and perfect it; and though they may 
not bring it up to the highest standard of even Ameri- 
can railroads, the more intelligent judgment is that 
they have made and are making fair return for their 
opportunity. The road is so sure to be valuable to 
own and operate, that self-interest invites them to a 
solid and safe construction throughout; and the gov- 
ernment will not be likely to let go its hold upon its 
various grants until this is secured. 

To the East, to the world at large, the opening of 
this Railroad is but opportunity for new wealth, a revo- 
lution to the courses of commerce, by putting America 
into intimate relations with Asia, and sending the 
traf&c of the Indies across our Continent, a fresh im- 



72 OUR NEW WEST. 

pulse to civilization, and the founding of a new em- 
pire on the Pacific Coast. But to the pioneers in the 
mountains and on the plains of the interior, and along 
the States of the Pacific shore, it is something more, 
and deeper. It is moral and social refreshment and 
rehabilitation. It was touching, even to tears, when 
we first visited these regions in 1865, to hear the ap- 
peals of the people for this that they now have so 
much more quickly than they then dreamed of The 
first question, from man or woman, was of the Pacific 
Eailroad. "When will it be built?" "Do use your 
influence to hasten it on." "We starve in soul and 
in heart and in pocket for that." It was the hunger, 
the prayer, the hope of all these peoples. For then, 
and without this chord of quick sympathy and com- 
munication, they did not feel at ease or at home in the 
far West. None of them ever spoke of California or 
Nevada as their home. "Home" was in the East. 
They were ever talking of going "Home." "When I 
was home last;" "I mean to go home next year," or, 
"just as soon as the Railroad is done;" "I have never 
been home since I came out;" "I fear I shall never 
see home again," — these and kindred phrases, un- 
consciously uttered almost, told where the heart was, 
— told of the yearning hunger of these pioneer spirits, 
not simply for "the cots where they were born," not 
merely for the circles of their kindred, nor the hills 
and the valleys amid which they were reared, — all 
these and something more, — but for the close contact 
and quick sympathy with the completer social, moral 
and intellectual life of the East, the absence of which 
every earnest spirit, orphaned in far away regions, 



WHO BUILT THE ROAD. 73 

feels above all other lackings. The Railroad is the 
chord along whose quick lines moves this food for the 
early settlers of our New West. It brings them home ; 
more, it carries home to them. Though they may 
never see its rails, or ride in its trains, they will feel 
its influence, and be more content and richer in their 
lives. It puts the great sections of the Nation into 
sympathy and unity; it marries the Atlantic and the 
Pacific ; it destroys disunion in the quarter where it 
was ever most threatening; it brings into harmony 
the heretofore jarring discords of a Continent of sepa- 
rated peoples; it determines the future of America, as 
the first nation of the world, in commerce, in govern- 
ment, in intellectual and moral supremacy. Who 
shall say that any price was too great to pay for these 
results ? 

The story of this great enterprise would not be 
complete without the names of a few at least of the 
many leaders of men and of capital, under whose 
auspices the work was initiated and constructed. Of 
the California Company, Leland Stanford was presi- 
dent, C. P. Huntington vice-president, Charles Crocker 
superintendent of construction, and S. S. Montague 
and George S. Gray engineers; of the Eastern or 
Union Pacific Company, Oliver Ames was president, 
Thomas C. Durant vice-president and superintendent 
of construction, G. M. Dodge and Silas Seymour en- 
gineers. Further down the list, among the contract- 
ors, deputy-superintendents and engineers, were men 
who perhaps contributed more to the rapid comple- 
tion and real labor of the enterprise than even some 
of these ; it was a work that called for the highest 



74 OUR NEW WEST. 

executive talent and the most indomitable energy to 
be found among the American people ; and it not 
only gathered these to itself, but by the inspiration 
of its own magnitude, it called these qualities out 
freshly, and put them into their most vigorous exer- 
cise. No other people than ours, — daring in concep- 
tion, rapid in acquirement, bold in execution, beyond 
any other nation, — could have both educated the men 
for such a work, and done it, too, all within five years 
of time. The Pacific Eailroad is another such an 
illustration, such a triumph of the American people, 
as the war and its peace. Both were original, and 
not only without precedent, but even without com- 
prehension by another people. 



IV. 

COLOEADO : ITS MOUNTAINS AND PAEKS. 

Back to the Eocky Mountains— Their Finest Scenery Away From the 
Railroad Line — Colorado, the Center and Backbone of the Conti- 
nent — Its Three Grand Divisions — Its Majestic Mountains — Its 
Great Natural Parks— North, Middle and South Parks— Summer 
Scenes Among the Mountains and Parks — The Western Division 
of Colorado— The Stage Ride from Cheyenne — Night in a Stage- 
Coach — Experiences on the Road — Denver, its Growth and Prom- 
ise, and its Panoramic Mountain View — Salt Lake City and Denver 
Compared. 

But, after all, this Eailroad, like railroads gener- 
ally, fails to exhibit the most striking and attractive 
features of the country. The iron track seeks level 
lines and smooth ways, and runs through the back 
yards of towns, across the desert plains of the inte- 
rior, and over the mountains in their humbler moods, 
away from commanding hights and picturesque atti- 
tudes. So, in bringing my reader back to show him 
the Eocky Mountains and to picture to him the attrac- 
tions of Colorado, I must take him away from the 
main line of the continental railway. Nature graded 
a grand pathway for the locomotive across our Conti- 
nent; the mountains fall back to the right of us and 
to the left of us, — so far away that we catch only the 



76 OUR NEW WEST. 

dim outline of their greatness, leaving but here and 
there a quaint ruin of or majestic monument to her 
mighty labor, — that civilization may go by steam from 
ocean to ocean. The great mountain center of the 
Continent lies below the present railroad line; it 
looms up in the distance at Cheyenne; it marches 
along the southern horizon as you sweep up and 
across the magnificent Laramie Plains; it cheers you 
through the rolling alkali dust of the Bitter Creek 
country; and it shoots its spurs in beauty and in 
power before you, as you seek, more slowly, a de- 
scending path into the Salt Lake Basin. But would 
you behold it in all its majestic grandeur, its multi- 
plied folds of hight, with fields of ice and snow and 
rock, its beauty of infinite form and color, its wealth 
of flora, and its wealth of gold and silver, — all the 
grand landscape and the hidden promise of the finest 
mountain region that the world holds, — then you 
must switch off from the main road, and come into 
the heart of Colorado, which is the very heart of our 
western Continent. 

As Pennsylvania is the key-stone in the Atlantic 
belt or arch of States, so is Colorado the key-stone 
in the grand continental formation. She holds the 
backbone, the stiffening of the Republic. Lying a 
huge square block in the very center of the vast 
region bounded by the Mississippi Yalley on the east, 
the Pacific Ocean on the west, and British America 
and Mexico north and south, the continental moun- 
tain chain here dwells in finest proportions, exagger- 
ates, puffs itself up and spreads itself around with a 
perfect wantonness and luxuriance of power, — great 



THE PLAINS SECTIOIST OF COLORADO. 77 

fountains of gold and silver, and lead and copper, and 
zinc and iron, — great fountains of water that pours 
itself in all directions through the interior of the 
Continent, feeding a wealth of agriculture that is 
little developed and never yet dreamed of even, — 
great fountains of health in pure, dry and stimulating 
air, — great fountains of natural beauty- she may 
proudly bid the Nation come to her for strength, for 
wealth, for vigor, — for rest and restoration, — and may 
well call her mountains the Sierre Madre, the Mother 
Mountains of the Continent. 

Her geographical prominence and parentage are 
but type and promise of her future relations to the 
developed and developing life of the Nation. Stretch- 
ing two hundred and sixty miles north and south, and 
three hundred and seventy-five miles east and west, 
her territory has three natural subdivisions. The 
eastern third is of the Plains, and forms their western 
section, — a high rolling plateau from four thousand to 
five thousand feet above the sea level, richly watered 
by streams from the mountains, the strips along the 
rivers ripe for abundant harvests of grains and fruits 
and vegetables, the whole already the finest pasture 
land of the Continent, and with irrigation, for which 
the streams afford ready facility, capable of most suc- 
cessful cultivation, — beautiful in its wide, treeless sea 
of green and gray, with waves of land to break the 
monotony and lift the eye on to the great panorama 
of mountains, snow-slashed and snow-capped, that 
hangs over its western line through all its length of 
two hundred and sixty miles, and marks the second 
or middle division of the State. This is of about equal 



78 OUR NEW WEST. 

widths — mountains one hundred, one hundred and 
fifty, two hundred miles deep, — on, on to the West, 
till even this pure air tires of carrying the eye over 
peak on peak, range on range. You think you must 
look over Brigham Young's fertile valleys, and trace 
the Colorado River out of its grand mystery, even if 
the outer and faintest rim of the horizon does not 
shadow forth the Sierra Nevada of California. 

Starting from an elevation at the end of the Plains 
of five thousand to ^yq thousand five hundred feet, 
these mountains rapidly carry you up to eight thou- 
sand, ten thousand, thirteen thousand, near to fifteen 
thousand feet above the sea level. Nine, ten, and 
twelve thousand feet peaks are scattered everywhere, 
— they are the mountains, — while those that mount 
to thirteen or fourteen thousand are plenty enough 
to be familiar, and are indeed rarely out of sight. 
They do not form a simple line, ascending from one 
and descending to another plain or valley, but are a 
dozen lines folded on, and mingling among each other, 
in admirable confusion; opening to let their super- 
fluous waters flow out; closing to hold their treasures 
and defy the approach of man ; gathering up all their 
strength, as it were, to make a peak or two of extra 
massive proportions, cold with snow and dreary with 
rock; and shading down into comparatively tender 
hills that woo the forests and the flowers to their 
very summits. The line of peaks that divide the 
waters that flow to the Atlantic from those coursing 
into the Pacific, — "the divide," par excellence, — 
twists and turns through the State, very much in the 
style of a long and double-backed bow, making an 



THE GREAT PARKS OF COLORADO. 79 

almost entire circle sometimes, and then coming back 
to its mission as a north and south line. Within its 
huge folds are other " divides/' separating the feeders 
to rival rivers of the same continental side, or rival 
feeders of the same river, and other ranges with peaks 
as high as the parent range ; and within and among 
them all, the hills, as if tired of hight and perpen- 
dicularity, give way to wide plains or prairies, with 
all the beauties and characteristics of plains and prai- 
ries outside the mountain region, and the added 
charm of holding little baby mountains of their own 
to diversify the landscape and feed forest and stream, 
while up and around them grow, through woods and 
grassy openings, the grand parent ranges that guard 
and enfold what are well called Natural Parks. 

These Parks are a distinctive and remarkable fea- 
ture of this mountain center or belt of Colorado. 
They open upon the traveler at frequent intervals in 
charming unexpectedness ; rich with grass and water, 
with trees and flowers, with soft beauty of outline 
and warm beauty of color, in most admirable contrast 
to the rough rocks and white snow of the high ranges 
around. Most of these Parks are, of course, petite, — 
little wide valleys around the heads of single streams, 
or the conjunctions of several, or the homes of sweet 
lakes; but there are four great ones that mark the 
phenomenon and give the name. These are North 
Park, Middle Park, South Park and San Luis Park, 
varying in size from tw^enty by fifty miles to one 
hundred by two hundred, or say from Rhode Island 
to Massachusetts, — little episodes and interjections 
among these mountains, by whose size, as thus stated. 



80 OUR NEW WEST. 

you may take in some sense of the extent and maj- 
esty of the region, of which they are a sub-feature, 
as a whole. 

The North Park extends up to the northern hue 
of the State and within thirty or forty miles of the 
Pacific Railroad; through and out of it flow the head 
waters of the North Platte; its streams are thicker 
with trout, and its sage bush and buffalo grass and 
wooded hill-sides offer more deer and wolves and 
antelopes and bears than are found in the lower and 
more frequented Parks, but its soil is colder, as its 
elevation is higher, and its charms of color and vege- 
tation more stinted. Middle Park lies next below, 
and separated by a single but high sub-range of the 
main mountains. This is fifty miles wide by seventy 
miles long, and as the continental divide sweeps 
around on its eastern side, all its waters flow into the 
Colorado of the West and so into the Pacific. But it 
embraces within itself several high ranges of hills 
and two or three different valleys. The great peaks 
of the Territory lie marshaled around it, — Long's 
Peak, Gray's Peaks, and Mount Lincoln, north-east, 
south-east and south-west, each from fourteen thou- 
sand to fourteen thousand five hundred feet high ; and 
snow-capped mountains circle its whole area. Milder 
and more beautiful in landscape than the North, it 
yet falls behind its neighbor on the other side, the 
South Park, which is thirty miles wide and sixty 
long, and, fellowshipping with the North Park, comes 
into the inner tail of the bow, carries the continental 
divide on its west, and furnishes the waters of the 
Arkansas and the South Platte. 



THE SOUTH AND SAK LUIS PAEKS. 81 

This (the South) is the most beautiful of the Parks 
and the better known. Mining discoveries within 
and around it have opened roads through it, and bor- 
dered it with settlements. It offers a remarkable 
combination of the beauties of the Plains and those of 
the Mountains. They mingle and mix in charming 
association. Wide areas of rich prairie open out 
before the level eye; upraise it or turn one side, and 
grand snowy mountains carry the sight up among 
the clouds ; and between these types of natural beauty 
are plentiful shadings in gently rolling hills, long level 
banks, thick and diversified forests, bright and bounti- 
ful streams, — all the grand panorama of natural beauty 
that hill and valley, mountain and plain, winter and 
summer, snow and verdure, trees and rocks, water 
and waste can produce in combination and compari- 
son, is here spread before the spectator, not from a 
single spot or in a single hour of his travel, but from 
mile to mile, from day's journey to day's journey, 
ever the same various scene, yet ever shifting in its 
kaleidoscopic alliances and changes. 

The San Luis Park lies along and around the Ar- 
kansas and its tributaries in Southern Colorado and 
Northern New Mexico, is the largest and perhaps the 
most varied of the series of great Parks, centers about 
a grand lake, and is rich alike in agricultural and 
mineral promise. The Indians robbed us of our 
promised peep into its lines, and we know it only 
by its kinship to those we have visited, and the en- 
thusiastic descriptions of those to whom it is familiar. 
But the South Park as yet takes the palm among the 
Coloradians, perhaps only, however, because it is the 



82 OUR NEW WEST. 

more accessible, and its beauties have been more 
thoroughly explored. Certainly it lies more closely 
in the lap of the great mountains ; and Mount Lin- 
coln and Pike's Peak, perhaps the most noted and 
remarkable of all the high peaks of the State, sentinel 
it north and south, feed it from their snows, protect it 
from the rough winds, shadow it from the sharp suns. 
In spite of these great elevations, the traveler 
carries summer skies as he keeps summer scenes 
with him at this season, in most of his excursions 
among the mountains and their parks in Colorado. 
We borrow our ideas of mountain travel and moun- 
tain hights from Switzerland and the White Mountains 
of New Hampshire. Among them both, vegetation 
ceases at about five thousand feet above the sea level, 
and perpetual snow reigns among the Alps at seven 
thousand to eight thousand feet, and would in the 
White Mountains if they went as high. But here in 
these vaster mountain regions than either of Western 
America, the hills themselves only begin to rise from 
the Plains at an elevation of five thousand five hun- 
dred feet. And at that hight, though the nights are 
always deliciously cool, the summer days are as warm 
as, if not warmer than they ever are in the valleys of 
the New England States, and snow enough for sleigh- 
ing or to force the cattle to shelter or other food than 
the prairie grass is only a rare chance, — a memory of 
the oldest, or a dream of the youngest inhabitant. 
At six thousand or seven thousand feet, in the valleys 
of the mountains, the small grains and the tenderer 
vegetables are successfully cultivated, and at seven 
thousand five hundred and eight thousand ^\e hun- 



THE s:n'Ow o:n" the mountaii^s. 83 

dred feet, potatoes, turnips and cabbages thrive. The 
Middle Park ranges from seven thousand seven hun- 
dred to nine thousand feet high in its level sections, 
and the South from six thousand fiye hundred to 
seven thousand ^ye hundred, while the higher plains 
and embraced hills of both run up to ten thousand 
and even eleven thousand feet. Yet grass grows 
richly and abundantly through both ; hay is a great 
natural crop, and is cured already for all the wants 
that can be reached ; and in the lower parts of the 
South Park, cattle winter out of doors, and the smaller 
grains and hardier vegetables are grown with great 
success and profit. Flowers are beautiful and abun- 
dant up to ten thousand or eleven thousand feet, — 
so beautiful and abundant that I must reserve them 
for special description, — the largest and best timber 
grows at nine thousand to eleven thousand feet, and 
trees do not cease till you pass above eleven thousand 
five hundred feet, while the real, absolute and per- 
petual snow line, — such snow and ice as are found 
universally in Switzerland at eight thousand feet,— is 
not reached at all in these mountains. At twelve 
thousand feet it begins to lie in great patches on the 
shaded sides of the hills, or in deep ravines, and goes 
on to multiply in such form as the mountains rise to 
their greatest hight at fourteen thousand to fourteen 
thousand five hundred feet. But it absolutely covers 
no mountain peak ; the tops of Gray's Peaks and 
Mount Lincoln, the highest points in the whole re- 
gion, are dry and bare, at least at midday, through 
August, though in reaching them you may go over 
snow-fields twenty or thirty feet deep and miles long, 



84 OUR NEW WEST. 

though nearly every morning's sun may glance bril- 
liantly off the freshly whitened peaks of all the high 
mountains in sight, and though it makes everywhere 
and at all times a significant feature in all the land- 
scape visions of the country. 

The full mountains of snow and the vast rivers of 
ice that belong to Switzerland are not here, and are 
certainly missed by the experienced mountain trav- 
eler; but for their absence we have many compensa- 
tions, — a more varied and richer verdure, a wider 
range of mountains, with greater variety of form and 
color, these elevated Parks, that have no parallel any- 
where for curious combination of landscape feature 
and beauty and practical use, a climate in summer 
that fosters comfort and makes high mountain travel 
both much more possible and agreeable, and an atmos- 
phere that, in purity and dryness, in inspiring influ- 
ence upon body and mind, can find no match in any 
part of Europe, nor elsewhere in America. 

The third or western great division of Colorado is 
comparatively unknown. Explorers have crossed it 
here and there; adventurous miners have penetrated 
into this and that of its valleys ; but it holds no real 
population, and its character is known only in a gen- 
eral way. The great mountain ranges shade down 
irregularly through it into the vast interior basin of 
the West, instead of breaking off almost abruptly, as 
they do on their eastern side, into the level plains; 
the Grand, the White, the Green and the Gunnison, 
the great feeders of the Colorado of the West, slash 
freely through it, often by narrow and unapproach- 
able gorges, often too through wide and rich valleys; 



THE KOADS TO DENVER. 85 

many a high park, with rough sage bush and tall 
grass, spreads itself out, cold and dreary in the north, 
warmer and more fertile in the south. Many a fable 
of rich mines, of beautiful valleys, of broken and 
ruined mountains, — the debris of great conflicts of 
nature, — many a deep faith in untold wealth and un- 
numbered beauties do I hear of and about this sec- 
tion of the State; but the fact remains that it has 
few settlers and no especial history, — and I gather 
the conclusion that it is in every way less interesting 
to traveler, less enticing to speculator or settler, than 
the middle and eastern divisions. New and thorough 
explorations are in progress through its lines; another 
year will add something to our knowledge of its val- 
leys and mountains ; but for the present it is perhaps 
as much unknown land as any section of equal size 
in the United States. 

To reach the heart alike of the civilization and the 
scenery of Colorado, the traveler now leaves the main 
Pacific Railroad at Cheyenne. A branch track will 
soon, if it does not already, carry him quickly through 
the hundred miles south to Denver. The more direct 
line of the St. Louis or Eastern Division Railroad is 
within two hundred miles of Denver on the east, and 
is under engagement with the government to continue 
its track to that point. The completion of this line 
will give Colorado two railroad connections with the 
East to the good fortune of both sections. But our 
second entrance into Denver, in the summer of 1868, 
was by a stage ride of twenty-two hours from Chey- 
enne. The road lay across the last fifty miles of the 
Plains, — through high rolling green prairies, cut every 



86 OUE NEW WEST. 

fifteen or twenty miles by a vigorous river, with bor- 
der of rich and cultivated intervale, and line of trees 
marking its progress from mountain debouch to the 
slow-sinking, wide-reaching horizon, — to the right the 
grim mountains with towering tops of rock and snow, 
— to the left the unending prairie ocean, with only 
an occasional cabin and scattered herd of cattle to 
break its majestic solitude and indicate human settle- 
ment ; there was such magnificent out-doorness in the 
continuous scene as no narrower or differently com- 
bined landscape can offer, and so long as the day 
lasted it was a thing of beauty and of joy. 

But the night cometh, when the landscape is shut 
out, and dreary weariness comes over the coach- 
crowding passengers. It is the first step that costs in 
all experience ; and of nothing is this more true than 
of the first night in a long stage-coach ride. It is 
more intolerable than the combination of the succeed- 
ing half-dozen, were the journey prolonged for a 
week; the breaking-in is fearful, — the prolongation is 
bearable. The air gets cold, the road grows dusty 
and chokes, or rough and alarms you ; the legs become 
stiff and numb, the temper edges ; everybody is over- 
come with sleep, but can't stay asleep, — the struggle 
of contending nature racks every nerve, fires every 
feeling; everybody flounders and knocks about 
against everybody else in helpless despair; perhaps 
the biggest man in the stage will really get asleep, 
which doing he involuntarily and with irresistible 
momentum spreads himself, legs, boots, arms and head, 
over the whole inside of the coach; the girls screech, 
the profane swear; some lady wants a smelling-bottle 



THE STAGE RIDE AND '' SQUARE MEALS." 87 

out of her bag, and her bag is somewhere on the 

floor, — nobody knows where, — but found it must be; 

everybody's back hair comes down, and what is nature 

and what is art in costume and character is revealed 

— and then, hardest trial of all, morning breaks upon 

the scene and the feelings, — everybody dirty, grimy, 

faint, "all to pieces," cross,— such a disenchanting 

exhibition! The girl that is lovely then, the man 

who is gallant and serene,— let them be catalogued 

for posterity, and translated at once,— heaven cannot 

spare such ornaments; and they are too aggravating 

for earth. 

But the horses are gayer and go faster than three 
years before; and the meals at the "home stations" 
are greatly improved; no more single-roomed turf 
cabins, bare dirt floors, milkless cofiee, rancid bacon, 
stale beans, and green bread, and " if you don't like 
these help yourself to mustard;" but comfortable 
little taverns of dressed timber and planed boards, 
with carpeted parlors and separate dining-rooms, 
fresh meat and milk and butter, trout and eggs, 
everything "square" in fact, and a hearty welcome. 
The road crosses half-a-dozen hearty streams, pour- 
ing away from the mountains, and finally aggregating 
in the Platte, but furnishing along their lines rich 
intervale land, now being rapidly taken up and sue- 
cessfully cultivated for farms. Several villages of 
growing importance we found at the principal river 
crossings. Only once, in the ride, did we fail of 
cheery greeting ; but it was a trifle rough to wake 
up the landlady at one o'clock in the morning for an 
early breakfast. She could get it, she said ; 1)ut she 



88 OUR NEW WEST. 

didn't quite like to. But who could resist the gallant 
Vice-President, whether pleading for ballot or break- 
fast ; or the offers of help from the ladies ; or the 
final suggestion of the driver ? She wavered at the 
first; the second operated as a challenge to her ca- 
pacity; and the third was irresistible. There is no 
king on his route like a stage driver, — he has a 
"dreadful winning way" with him, both for horses 
and women. The philosophy of it I do not under- 
stand, but the fact is universal and stubborn ; he is 
the successful diplomat of the road; no authority 
goes back of his ; no meal can be begun till he is in 
place ; and there are no vacant seats for the men 
passengers on the box when there are ladies in the 
party. So, at two o'clock in the morning, we sat 
down to beef and ham and potatoes, tea and coffee, 
bread and butter, pies, cakes, and canned fruits, — not 
even the edges of the "squareness" of the meal 
rubbed off, and good humor everywhere. 

Denver looked even more charming than three 
years ago, as we tumbled out of the stage, long after 
" sun up," feeble and flabby, hungry and humble, with 
a dreadful "morning after" feeling and appearance 
and movement about us. The town has, indeed, 
passed its hot, fickle and uncertain days, when gam- 
blers reigned, and "to be or not to be" was the ever- 
lasting question that fretted everybody who owned 
real estate, and with which they, in a sort of your- 
money-or-your-life manner, assaulted every stranger 
the moment he got out of the stage. Now, though 
trade was dull while waiting for the Eailroad to come, 
and we saw but a single street fight while in the 



DENVER. 89 

town, the Denverites all wear a fixed fact sort of air, 
and most of them are able to tell you, in a low and 
confidential chuckle, calling for envy rather than 
sympathy, that they own a quarter section just out 
there on the bluff, to which the town is rapidly 
spreading, and where the capitol buildings and the 
fine residences will all be located, or a few corner lots 
down near the river, where the mills and the factories 
are destined to rise in the near future. Long lines 
of brick stores already give permanent and prosper- 
ous air to the town; its dry and its wet rivers are 
both newly bridged; irrigating ditches scatter water 
freely through streets, lawns and gardens, and now 
flowers and fruits, trees and vegetables lend their 
civilizing influences and their permanent attractions 
to the place; national banks emit their greenbacks 
and will " do " your little note most graciously at from 
one to two per cent a month and "a grab mortgage" 
behind it; Episcopal Bishop Eandall from Boston has 
established an excellent school for girls ; the Catholics 
have a larger educational establishment; the Metho- 
dists have the handsomest church and wear the best 
clothes; the Baptists and Congregationalists are lively 
and aggressive; the stores are closed Sundays; the 
nights are quiet and the police have a sinecure; free 
schools are organized; and three daily papers and 
two independent weeklies are published in the town. 
Kitchen girls are scarce and a dear luxury, with pay 
at fifty dollars to seventy-five dollars a month; but 
the consequence is that the cooking is excellent, and 
people live "first rate." The dwelling-houses are 
mostly small, a single story or a story and a half, but 



9b OUR NEW WEST. 

within are comforts and luxuries in abundance, and 
one house boasts a true Van Dyke. The emigrant 
and the traveler must "move on" by Denver if he 
would get beyond the organization of the best Amer- 
ican social and intellectual life. 

I see I have spoken of Denver's "dry river/' which 
calls for a parenthetical paragraph in explanation. 
The South Platte sweeps around the lower part of the 
town, broad and turbulent, of certain volume but 
uncertain track, useless for navigation but excellent 
for irrigation; but more sharply through the center 
of the business section lies Cherry Creek, now a broad 
bottom of dry sand, and only occasionally enlivened 
with any water. For years after the founding of the 
town, none appeared in its bed, and supposing it to 
have been deserted altogether, the people builded and 
lived in the bottom. Stores^ shops and dwellings, 
streets and blocks appeared there; it was the heart 
of the town; the printing ofiice was there, also the 
city records ; but of a sudden, after a heavy rain, there 
came a flood pouring down the old river bed, not 
gradually and in rivulets, to warn, but a full-blown 
stream marched abreast with torrent force and almost 
lightning speed, reclaimed its own, and swept every- 
thing that had usurped its place into destruction. 
Since then, the people have paid respect to Cherry 
Creek; at some seasons of the year there is still a 
little water in its sands, but for the most part it is dry 
through the town; but nobody builds in the bed, and 
bridges over its path pay tribute to what it has been 
and may be again. Farther up its line, there is water 
in it now; but the sands consume and an irrigating 



THE MOUNTAIN VIEW FROM DENVER. 91 

ditch seduces it all away before it reaches the limits 
of the city. 

Her central location, under the Mountains, in the 
Plains section of the State, gives Denver a fine cli- 
mate the year through ; is favorable for trade to all 
parts of the State ; secures to her the outgo and the 
income of the mining districts; makes her also the 
chief market for all the productions of the farming 
counties, and the focal point for all travel to and 
from the Mountains, as well as north to the Eailroad, 
and south to New Mexico ; and endows her with a 
scene of mountain panoramic beauty, one hundred 
miles long, now touched with clouds, now radiant 
with sunshine, then dark with rocks and trees, again 
white with snow, now cold, now warm, but always 
inspiring in grandeur, and ever unmatched by the 
possession of any other city of Europe or America. 
The finest views of these Mountains are obtained 
farther out on the Plains, where the more distant 
peaks come into sight, and the depth and variety, as 
well as the hight and beauty of the range, are real- 
ized ; and wider and older travelers than I, — who 
have seen the Cordilleras of South x\merica from the 
sea, as well as the Alps from Berne, — -join in the 
judgment that no grand mountain view exists that 
surpasses this, as seen from the high roll of the prai- 
rie just out of Denver, and over which the town is 
fast spreading, and so on for twenty to forty miles 
farther east. 

With these charms of climate and landscape, with 
a settled and intelligent and prosperous population 
already of four thousand to five thousand, with busi- 



92 OUE NEW WEST. 

ness connections and facilities, social order and attrac- 
tions, religious and educational institutions, all well 
organized, and fed by their own interior force, — grow- 
ing from within out, and not simply by fresh importa- 
tions of eastern material, — and holding the conceded 
position of the social, political and commercial capital 
of the State, Denver has a gratifying future of growth 
before it. Another year will bring through it the 
Pacific Railroad on the St. Louis route, connecting 
here with the branch of the main or central road that 
drops down from Cheyenne; a railroad is already 
commenced, also, towards the mining centers of the 
mountains by the Clear Creek Yalley ; and it cannot 
be long before a southern road will be demanded, 
down from Denver, along the base of the mountains 
to Southern Colorado and Santa Fe. Not unlikely, 
indeed, it will prove wiser to carry the first Southern 
Pacific Eailroad around this way, rather than to strike 
diagonally across to Santa Fe from the present ter- 
minus of the St. Louis Road, as is proposed, for this 
route is through a rich and already partly developed 
agricultural country, while that goes by half or wholly 
barren table-lands, not likely to be at all occupied for 
many years, and never capable like this of holding 
a large population. 

Coal and iron and clay are found in the neighbor- 
hood ; the hills give timber ; the valleys every grain 
and vegetable and many fruits ; and Denver cannot 
well escape a steady and healthy growth, and the 
destiny of becoming one of the most permanently 
prosperous, as it will be certainly one of the most 
beautiful of our great western interior cities. I 



DENVER VS. SALT LAKE CITY. 93 

rank it along with Salt Lake City. Both are off 
the main line of the continental Railroad ; but both 
have locations, amid developed natural wealth and 
conceded natural beauty, that must command their 
future, and make it one of power and prosperity for 
each. Six hundred miles apart, with the continental 
range of mountains separating them, there can be 
no rivalry between them, save in social graces and 
pleasure attractions, and here the Mormon supremacy 
in Salt Lake will give Denver great advantages. 



Y. 

LIFE AMONG THE MOUNTAINS. 

The Roads from Denver into the Mountains — What they Reveal to the 
Traveler — How Pleasure Parties Travel and Camp — The North 
Clear Creek and Central City — The South Clear Creek Valley,, and 
its Attractions — Idaho and its Springs — Outfit for a Camping Ex- 
perience — The Mule — Over the Mountains by Berthoud Pass to 
Middle Park — The Flowers and the Forests of the Upper Moun- 
tains — The Camp at Night. 

All the mining in Colorado is up among the 
mountains, and this has provided roads in all direc- 
tions. To the north-west from Denver, one leads up 
Boulder Creek, first through forming villages, and 
then among mining camps, till it carries us to the 
very tops of the range. More directly west are the 
roads to Golden City, Black Hawk, Central City, 
Nevada, Idaho, Fall River, Mill City, Georgetown 
and Empire, in the valleys of Clear Creek; while 
south-west are roads into and across the South Park 
to Hamilton and Fairplay and Breckinridge, and on 
over into the mining regions of the upper Arkansas 
Valley. Daily stages go up into the Clear Creek 
Valleys, where at least ten thousand people are sup- 
ported or are hoping to be supported by the gold 
and silver mines. 



ALONG THE MOUNTAIN EOADS. 95 

All these roads introduce one delightfully to close 
companionship with the mountain scenery,— first 
through the long, wide prairie; then into narrow 
valleys; occasionally a bold gorge or canyon and a 
broken mountain; up and among and over high hills, 
commanding majestic views of higher summits be- 
yond; through little wooded parks or open fields, 
where grain grows and flocks feed, and somebody 
keeps "a ranch;" hy lively streams with tangles of 
willows and hops and clematis, and fruity shrubs up 
the drier and higher banks; among flowers every- 
where, growing finer and plentier the higher you 
chmb ; out and in forests of various species of cotton- 
wood and evergreen, often brown and dead through 
wasting fires that have swept the hill-sides, or half 
cleared for the consuming rage of the gold and silver 
furnaces, but still a rich possession of beauty and 
wealth for the country; under a sun always searching 
with heat, but through an atmosphere growing rarer 
and rarer and drier and drier, and ever fresh and 
cool,— the day's ride is thus a perpetual pleasure and 
surprise to the new-comer. 

How the mind runs back to our youthful, vague, 
mythical knowledge of the Eocky Mountains in their 
actual presence ! How difiicult to realize that, where- 
as, twenty years ago, they and their location and 
character, and the region about them were almost un- 
known, now, only a week from the Atlantic shores, 
we are sporting familiarly under their shadows, fol- 
lowing tediously up their sides, galloping in the saddle 
around their summits, drinking from their streams, 
playing snow-ball in midsummer with their imperish- 



96 OUR NEW WEST. 

able snow-banks, descending into their very bowels, 
and finding companionship and society as various and 
as cultured and as organized as in New England; 
cities of thousands of inhabitants, not only at their 
base, but away up in their narrow valleys, eight and 
nine thousand feet above the sea level! All this 
seems dream-like, yet abundant experience with every 
sense testifies to the reality. 

Our party went at first in various ways and by 
Various roads up into the mountains; some on the 
stage; others on horseback; others still in wagons 
with camp equipage, stopping wherever hunger or 
night overtook us, and establishing board and lodging 
out in the open air, by free-running stream, and under 
inviting trees. This independent camping habit is 
almost the rule for all pleasure parties into the moun- 
tains. It grew up with the necessities of the early 
settlements, and out of the roving, straggling habits 
of the miners. The taverns are not now frequent or 
good; the climate favors the outdoor life in the sum- 
mer season; and with provision in abundance, as 
blankets, a coffee-pot, a frying-pan, and a sack of flour 
and a side of bacon, either in a wagon, or packed on 
an extra horse, if you are journeying in the saddle, 
even pleasure-travelers find it much the more com- 
fortable and decidedly the more independent mode, 
while to the old settler, and especially to a miner, it 
is altogether a matter of course. One of these hangs 
his blanket and his coffee-pot and frying-pan, with a 
joint of meat and a bit of bread, around his saddle, 
and, without extra animal or companion, is good for 
a week's journey among the mountains. What he 



CAMPING OUT — CENTRAL CITY. 97 

lacks for food he finds in the streams or woods, or 
buys at the occasional ranch, and at night a deserted 
cabin, which is nearly always at hand, where miners 
have been and are not, or a roadside tree and an 
open camp fire furnish him shelter and warmth. He 
sleeps the sleep of the tired, and if it rains and he 
gets wet, the renewed fire dries him, and the climate 
never encourages colds. So with the multiple of our 
single traveler; with companions, conveniences and 
comforts increase, but the fashion is the same ; and 
whole families, — mothers and babies included, — will, 
with covered wagon and a saddle-horse or two, make 
a pleasure visit to the mountains, after this fashion, 
and live literally on the country for days and weeks, 
in delightful and refreshing companionship with Na- 
ture. It was this sort of life that we were all entering 
upon, with all its strange novelty and stimulating in- 
fluences. 

The road by Golden City offers more striking 
mountain and rock scenery; that by Mount Ver- 
non is generally the more inviting. The North 
Clear Creek Yalley is hardly more than a ravine, 
through which for ^yo miles are huddled the chief 
gold-mining operations of the State. Black-Hawk, 
Central City and Nevada run into and over each 
other, and form really but a single town. The clang 
of mills, the debris of mines, the waste of floods leave 
nothing that is inviting, except money-making; and 
unless the traveler is interested in studying this form 
of it, he will be content with a passing glance, and seek 
the more pleasing neighboring valley of the South 
Branch. Here, below Idaho, gulch mining, which is 



98 OUK NEW WEST. 

pretty lively and successful still, despoil® the prospect 
so far as man can; but the dozen or fifteen miles 
from Idaho, up by Fall River, Mill City and Empire, 
to Georgetown, is quite the nicest bit of the inhabited 
portion of the mountains. The valley is not wide, 
indeed you can heave a stone across it in the nar- 
rower, and fire a rifle from hill to hill at its wider 
parts ; but it breaks out frequently into little nooks 
of plateaus or bars ; it opens up into seductive side 
valleys or canyons, and it winds and turns about, and 
sends up its high mountain walls in form and manner, 
to present a constantly varying but ever beautiful 
scene. At the upper end, winter confronts you in 
snow-covered peaks; below, nature looks warm and 
summer-like ; and though the valley is from seven 
thousand five hundred to eight thousand ^ye hun- 
dred feet high, the days are like June and October, 
and the winter is not long or severe. Till you 
reach Georgetown, where the hills shut in the valley 
sharply, and the rich silver section has its center, 
there is not much mining, and the villages are but 
neighborhoods of six to a dozen houses each. Idaho 
and Fall River have good hotels, and are favorite 
summer resorts. The former has a wonderful hot 
soda spring that furnishes most refreshing and health- 
giving baths. Over it rise a family group of three 
peaks, distinguishable in all mountain views, and 
known as the Chief, Squaw and Papoose, and up 
from the valley here you rise to Chicago Lake and 
Chicago Mountain, familiar as the foreground scene 
in Bierstadt's " Storm in the Rocky Mountains." 
All these mountains go sharply up from two to 



AN OUTFIT FOR CAMP LIFE. 99 

four thousand feet above the valley, often past the 
timber-line, and end in snow or bare, grim rocks. 
They offer unending fascination to the lover of 
mountain-climbing and mountain views- while to 
lie on the grassy banks just above the river, — that, 
in practical parenthesis, it should be noted, runs 
swift and strong down the rapid descent of the 
valley, and is full of " water power," — in the warm 
sun, and look through the snowy fleece of grass- 
hoppers, that with outstretched wings fill the air, 
up and among the hills, — masses of forest and rock 
and patches of snow, — to the line of brightened blue 
sky they border,— this is just comfort and rest, and 
IS worth the coming to experience. 

Up here, we stripped for a pure saddle and camp 
trip over into Middle Park. The ladies and super- 
fluous baggage were returned to town, and we came 
down to " bed-rock," as the miners say, i. e. an extra 
flannel shirt and a pocket-comb. My individual out- 
fit may serve both to show our manner of travel and 
life, and as a model for the reader who shall follow 
our experiences. First, woolen stockings and winter 
under-clothing ; and of these, an extra set, with two 
extra handkerchiefs and two towels, soap, comb and 
tooth-brush and slippers, only moderately filled a pair 
of light saddle-bags on my own animal. Over the 
undershirt was worn a dark and thick cassimere shirt, 
with turnover collar of same and pocket in breast, 
which, coming nowhere in contact with the body, 
may be worn for weeks without disrespect to your 
washerwoman. A pair of very thick, high-top riding 
boots, of extra size, my last winter's thick pantaloons 



100 OUR NEW WEST. 

and heavy sack coat, and an old soft liat, flexible as a 
rag, and answering as well for a nightcap, completed 
my clothing. No vest or waistcoat, no suspenders ; a 
strap around the waist held things together, and carried 
a revolver and a tin cup. Over the saddle-bags be- 
hind were strapped a thin woolen overcoat, — it would 
have been better thick, — and a loose rubber cloth coat; 
both which were frequently in use, and were always 
valuable at night ; and as often in mid-day they had 
the company around the saddle of the sack-coat, and I 
rode under the warm sun in pantaloons and shirts. It 
was a neat, complete and compact personal outfit; 
everything that was needed for a trip of two or three 
weeks, and the only modification I would make, in 
going again, would be to substitute a pair of old shoes 
for the slippers, and to have the rubber overcoat so 
modified that it would closely cover the legs in the 
saddle down to the boot-tops. All this was carried on 
and around my own saddle ; my bedding alone went 
on the pack animals, and this consisted of two pairs 
of heavy blankets, a buffalo robe, a rubber blanket 
and a pillow, — all strapped into a tight roll or bundle, 
— no more than one restless sleeper needs in the cold 
nights of these outdoor mountains, but equally abund- 
ant for two square and fair sleepers who will turn over 
at one and the same time and don't kick the clothes off. 
My mule, — did you ever ride a mule ? There is 
no other experience that exactly fits one for this. 
As far as a mule's brains go, he is pretty sensible, — 
and so obstinate! But it takes a long while to beat 
a new idea into his head, and when it dawns on him, 
the effect is so overpowering that he just stops in 



I CELEBRATE THE MULE. 101 

amazed bewilderment, and won't move on again until 
he is relieved of the foreign consciousness, and gets 
back to his own original possessions. The whole 
process is startlingly human ; it inspires you with 
faith in the idea of the transmigration of souls. I 
know so many people who must have been mules 
once, or will be, — else there is no virtue in the fitness 
of things ! But my mule belonged to the best of the 
race ; he was prudent, — he never went in any doubt- 
ful places until somebody else had gone before and 
proved the way; he was very patient, — he would 
always stop for me to get ofi", or to get on ; he was 
very tough,- — my spurs never seemed to annoy him 
one atom, and my riding him didn't wear any skin off 
of his backsides, not a bit. But after we grew ac- 
quainted, and he came to appreciate the more delicate 
shades of my character, we got on charmingly to- 
gether for the first half of the day ; in the afternoon, 
when he grew lazy and tired, and I nervous, we often 
had serious discussions, — sometimes with sticks, — but 
he generally got the best of the argument. 

If a well-broken Indian pony or a "broncho" (a 
California half-breed horse) can be got, either is prob- 
ably better than a mule ; more springy in tread and 
quicker in movement, and equally careful in moun- 
tain-climbing and fording streams and ditches; but 
otherwise, the mule is the better animal for your 
work on these expeditions. A "States" horse cannot 
stand the hard riding and tough climbing, and besides 
must have grain to keep him up, while the mule and 
the Indian and "broncho" ponies will live on the rich 
grasses of the country. The latter are apt to be 



102 OUR NEW WEST. 

wilful and wicked, and should only be taken, in pref- 
erence to the mules, upon good references as to 
character and a trial to boot. 

But our select party of a dozen gentlemen, led now 
by the local Governor Hunt, are already far ahead. 
We have passed the beautifully located village of 
Empire City, and are up where the Clear Creek is 
but a lively brook. The valley has become a de- 
file, a gorge, wooded and flowered, rock-strewed and 
briskly watered, — a wild Alpine scene. The moun- 
tains rise sharp and sheer, one thousand and two 
thousand feet above the road, and wide walls of red 
granite hang over it. The stream turns and twists, 
and foams, and we follow a half-made road along, 
over, in its rugged path. There was an attempt 
made a few years ago to build a stage road through 
the mountains and over into Utah by this route ; 
many thousand dollars were spent upon it; but it 
was found too big a job, and it is passable now for 
only a few miles farther on. It takes the traveler 
into and among rich mountain beauties; even to 
come up here and go back, without an objective 
point beyond, is abundant recompense. 

We turn sharply from the road up the steep moun- 
tain side, a narrow trail guiding us along precipitous 
lines. The mis-step of the m.ule would send animal 
and rider rolling over and over among the sparse 
trees down the declivity; but mules don't mis-step, 
and even the top-heavy pack jacks, — mountains on 
mole-hills, indeed, — carried their burden and them- 
selves unharmed to the top. The thin and thin- 
ning air offered severer trial, however, and the 



THE MOUNTAIN FLOWERS. 103 

beasts struggled like huge bellows for wind, and 
trembled beneath us in the effort to take in enough 
to keep agoing ; to get off and walk was to undergo 
the same trial ourselves, and, walking or riding, we 
had every few rods to stop and adjust the lungs of 
man and beast to the rare and growing rarer air. 
There was temptation to stop, too, in the widening 
views of the upper mountains ; their snowy fields and 
gray or red or brown walls and peaks lifted into 
sight, on all sides, close and familiar, distant and 
stranger, but making us feel, for the first time, their 
real companionship, — that nearness to great and sub- 
lime nature that awes and uplifts like the presence 
of God himself 

Passing the sharp mountain side, we came, at a 
hight of ten thousand feet, to pleasant little park 
openings, ascending by easy grade, half-wooded, and 
whose bright grass and abundant flowers and deep 
evergreens tell of fertile soil and protecting hights 
around. Such spots are frequent in all these high 
mountain ranges, and are exceeding fair to look 
upon. They were in their glory at this August sea- 
son of the year; it is but a little while back to last 
year's snows, and a few weeks forward to another 
wintry embrace ; and they make the most of their 
stinted time. So in July and August they compress 
the growth and the blossom of the whole year ; and 
we see at once flowers that are passed and flowers 
that are yet to come in the Plains below ; dandelions 
and buttercups, violets and roses, larkspurs and hare- 
bells, painter's brush and blue gentian, — these and 

their various companions of spring, summer and au- 
7 



104 OUK NEW WEST. 

tumn^ here they all are^ starring the grass, drooping 
over the brook, improving every bit of sunshine 
among the trees, jealous of every lost hour in their 
brief lives. 

I wish I could repeat the roll of this army of 
beauties for the benefit of my flower-learned readers ; 
I know most of them very well by sight, as the lad 
said of his unlearned alphabet, but cannot call them 
by name. Blue and yellow are the dominant colors; 
of the former several varieties of little bell and trum- 
pet-shaped blossoms, pendant along stalwart stalks; 
again, a similar shaped flower, but more delicate, — a 
little tube in pink and white, seems original here; and 
of the golden hues, there are babies and grand-babies 
of the sun-flower family in every shade and shape. 
One of these, about the size of a small tea-saucer, 
holds a center stem or spike of richest maroon red, 
with deepest yellow leaves flaring away from it, — 
each color the very concentration and ripeness of itr 
self, as if dyed at the very fountain head. The hare- 
bell is at home everywhere ; drooping modestly and 
alone on the barren and exposed mountain sides at 
eleven thousand or twelve thousand feet, as well as 
ill the protected parks among all its rivals; but the 
fringed gentian is more fastidious, and grows only 
where nature is richer, but then in such masses, with 
such deep blueness and such undeviating uprightness 
of stem, as to prove its birthright here. The painter's 
brush, as familiarly called here, is a new flower to 
me ; something like the soldier's pompon in form, it 
stands stiff and distinct on a single stalk, about six 
inches tall, with three inches' length and one inch in 



THE FEOST YS. THE FLOWERS. 105 

thickness or diameter of flower, in every shade of 

red from deepest crimson to pale pink, and again in 

straw colors from almost white to deep lemon. We 

picked on a single morning's ride seven of different 

shades of red. A bunch of the brightest of this 

flower, with sprinkling of those of milder hues and 

a few grasses, such as could be gathered in ^ye 

minutes in many a patch of Alpine meadow we 

passed through, was enough to set a flower-lover 

crazy with delight. It was a beacon, a flame of 

color, and would make a room glow like brilliant 

picture or wood fire on the hearth. But perhaps the 

most bewitching of the flowers we discovered was a 

columbine, generous but delicate, of pale but firm 

purple and pure white,— it was very exquisite in 

form and shading. Higher up, where only mosses 

could grow for rock and snow, these were in great 

variety and richness, with white, with blue and with 

pink blossoms. 

All this wonderful wealth and variety of flower is 
marked with strength but not coarseness ; the colors 
are more deep and delicate than are found in garden 
flowers ; and though frost and snow may stiffen their 
blossoms every morning,— for at ten thousand feet 
high and above, the temperature must go down to 
freezing every night,— the dryness of the air preserves 
them through their season, and they keep on growing 
and flowering until their September and October 
winter fairly freezes them out. 

There is no such variety and beauty in the forests 
of the Eocky Mountains as those of the East and 
the extreme West alike offer. The oak, the maple. 



106 OUR NEW WEST. 

the elm, the birch, all hard woods are unknown. 
Pines, firs and spruces of various species, and the 
cotton-wood, a soft maple or poplar, with delicate 
white wood and a pale green and smooth leaf, are all 
that this region can offer for trees. Nor are these 
generally of large size. The forests seem young and 
the individual trees small, even by the side of those 
of New England ; there is no hint among them of the 
giants of the Pacific Coast. The probability is that 
they are young, that the Indians kept them well 
burned off, and that, with settlement and civilization, 
in spite of the wanton waste now in progress, and 
against which there should be some speedy protec- 
tion, the forest wealth will increase. Perhaps not in 
these first years, but by and by, when coal takes the 
chief place for fuel, and self-interest and legislation 
work out their care of the trees, and prevent devas- 
tating fires. But many a fine grove of thick and tall 
pines, that would warm the heart of any ship-builder, 
have we passed through; and their deep colors and 
firm forms, contrasting with the light and free-moving 
cotton-wood, give a pleasing and animated life to the 
forest landscape. 

But the silver spruce is the one gem of the trees ; 
a sort of first cousin of the evergreen we call the 
balsam fir in our New England yards, but more richly 
endowed with beauty of shape and color. It is scat- 
tered plentifully through these mountain valleys, and 
looks as if a delicate silver powder had been strewn 
over its deep green needles, or rather as if a light 
white frost had fallen all upon and enshrouded it ; and 
you cannot help wondering why the breeze does not 



THE EVERGREENS OF THE MOUNTAINS. 107 

shake the powder off, or the sun dissipate the frost, so 
ever present is the one illusion or the other. But it 
holds its birthright persistently, — a soft white-blue- 
green combination of positive power that comes into 
the rather hardish gray neutral coloring of the gen- 
eral landscape with most agreeable, even inspiriting 
effects. This and another spruce often throw them- 
selves into a very charming form of growth ; gather- 
ing around an old pine, they will shoot up numerous 
spires, thin and tall, thicker and shorter, and so shade 
down to a close, spreading mass in a wide semicircle 
around, — a bit of natural cathedral-like posturing in 
tree and shrub life, so often repeated as to suggest art, 
so effective as to call out the delight and envy of every 
landscape artist who sees it. Everywhere among these 
high mountains, in barren rather than in fertile spots, 
we unexpectedly find the " Mahonia Holly," a favorite 
but winter dying shrub of our eastern lawns ; they 
call it here the Oregon grape, for it bears a little berry, 
and it is evidently killed to the root every winter, for 
it gets only a few inches of growth, and I do not 
find it massed at all. But in its freely scattered little 
specimens, its deep, smooth and hard green leaves 
kept company with us until we had passed the timber 
line, and come out among the snow-fields. 

After three or four hours' hard riding, from the 
upper Clear Creek, we suddenly came out of the 
tree»3 into an open space of scanty green, bordered by 
snow, a gap or sag in the mountains, — and behold we 
are at the top of Berthoud Pass. The waters of the 
Atlantic and Pacific start from our very feet; the 
winds from the two oceans suck through here into 



108 OUR NEW WEST. 

each other's embrace; above us the mountain peaks 
go up sharp with snow and rock^ and shut in our 
view; but below and beyond through wide and thick 
forests Hes Middle Park, a varied picture of plain and 
hill, with snowy peaks beyond and around. To this 
point;, at leastj I would advise all pleasure travelers in 
Colorado to come; it is a feasible excursion for any 
one who can sit in the saddle ; it can be readily made 
with return in a day from Empire, Georgetown or 
even Idaho; and it offers as much of varied and sub- 
lime beauty in mountain scenery, as any so compara- 
tively easy a trip within our experience possibly can. 
But until improved paths are made, — which must 
soon be, however, — a heroic spirit and a tough body 
are needed for the descent into the Park. Through 
a tangle of trees and rock and morass, down a very 
steep mountain side, sliding, stumbling, scrambling, it 
was a long and hard afternoon's work to master it 
all. It was near dark, after traveling from twenty 
to twenty-five miles in all, when we stopped for the 
night in the woods, just without the open section of 
the Park. A bit of meadow with tall grass was at 
hand for the animals, and, relieved of saddles and 
packs, away they went, without let or hindrance to 
enjoy it. The only precaution taken is to leave the 
lariat, a rope of twenty to thirty feet long, dragging 
at their necks, by which to catch them the more 
easily in the morning. Only a portion of the herd 
are thus provided, however. They rarely stray away 
far from camp ; and if they should, these people make 
little of an hour or two's hunt to find them, which 
they are quite sure of doing wherever the best grass 



AROUND THE CAMP FIRE. 109 

grows. The animals are picketed only when there is 
danger from the Indians, or a prompt start is neces- 
sary. 

A big fire was soon blazing ; a part prepare the 
supper, — tea and coffee, bacon, trout, potatoes, good 
bread and butter, and, to-night, a grouse soup, the 
best use Governor Hunt can make of an old bird 
he shot on the road to-day, and very good use it 
proved, too, by the help of tin pail, potatoes and but- 
ter ; others feed the fire, bring the water, and prepare 
the camp for sleeping. An old canvas cloth serves 
for table ; we squat on our blankets around it, and 
with tin cups, tin plates, knife and fork and spoon, 
take what is put before us, and are more than con- 
tent. Eating rises to a spiritual enjoyment after such 
a day ; and the Trois Freres or Delmonico does not 
ofier a "squarer meal" than Governor Hunt. The 
" world's people " make their beds against a huge 
tree, and cut and plant boughs around the heads to 
keep out the cold wind ; but the old campers drop 
their blankets anywhere around the fire ; and after 
going back over the day and forward to the morrow 
in pleasant chat, sitting around the glowing mass of 
flame and coal, we crawl in under our blankets, in 
a grand circle about the now smouldering logs, say 
our prayers to the twinkling stars up through the 
trees, and, — think of those new spring beds just in- 
vented in New England ! 



YI. 

THE IVHDDLE PAEK AND THE UTE INDIANS. 

A Day's Ride Across the Middle Park — An Indian Encampment, and 
our Reception Tiiereat — The Mountain Raspberries — The Hot Sul- 
phur Springs — The Ute Indians ; How they Live, Move and have 
Being — A Lingering Farewell to Middle Park — Over the Boulder 
Pass — A Winter's Morning and a Summer's Noon on the Mountains 
— Night in a Barn. 

It was nine o'clock the next morning before we 
could move off into the Park. It is not an easy 
matter to make an earlier start when we have to 
carry our homes with us; cook and eat breakfast; 
wash the dishes ; catch the animals ; pack up beds 
and provisions; clean up camp, and reconstruct not 
only for a day's journey, but for a family moving. A 
short ride brought us into miles of clear prairie, with 
grass one to two feet high, and hearty streams strug- 
gling to be first into the Pacific Ocean. This was the 
Middle Park, and we had a long twenty-five miles 
ride northerly through it that day. It was not mo- 
notonous by any means. Frequent ranges of hills 
break the prairie ; the latter changes from rich bot^ 
tom lands with heavy grass, to light, cold gravelly 
uplands, thin with bunch grass and sage bush ; slug' 




"LO, THE POOR INDIAN."— A Company of Uxe Braves. 



ACKOSS MIDDLE PARK. 113 

gish streams and quick streams alternate; belts of 
hardy pines and tender looking aspens (cotton-wood) 
lie along the crests or sides of hills ; farther away are 
higher hills fully wooded, and still beyond, ^Hhe range'* 
that bounds the Park and circles it with eternal snows. 
The sun shines warm; there are wide reddish walls 
of granite or sandstone along many of the hills ; some 
of the intervales are rich with green grass ; and the 
sky is deep blue ; and yet the prevailing tone and im- 
pression of the Park is a coldish gray. You find it 
on the earth ; you see it in the subdued, tempered, 
or faded greens of leaf and shrub and grass ; it hangs 
over the distant mountains ; it prevails in the rocks ; 
you feel it in the air, — a certain sort of stintedness or 
withholding impresses you, amid the magnificence of 
distance, of hight and breadth and length, with which 
you are surrounded, and which is the first and great- 
est and most constant thought of the presence. 

We scattered along wildly enough; some stopping 
to catch trout; others humoring lazy mules and horses; 
others to enjoy at leisure the novel surroundings, — 
meeting, with fellow-feeling, for lunch and the noon 
rest, but dividing again for the afternoon ride. All 
had gone before, — leaders, guides, packs, and were 
out of sight, — when my comrade and myself rose 
over the last hill of the day's ride, and looked down 
into the valley that was our destination. It was a 
broad, fine vision. Eight and left, several miles apart, 
ran miniature mountain ranges, — before, six miles 
away, rose an abrupt gray mountain wall; just be- 
neath it, through green meadow, ran the Grand Eiver; 
up to us a smooth, clean, gradual ascent; along the 



114 OUR NEW WEST. 

river bank, a hundred white tents, like dots in the 
distance, showed the encampment of six to eight 
hundred Ute Indians, awaiting our party with "heap 
hungry " stomachs \ in the upper farther corner, under 
the hill-side, a faint mist or steam in the air located 
the famous Hot Springs of the Middle Park, — the 
whole as complete a picture of broad, open plain, 
set in mountain frame, as one would dream of It 
spurred our lagging spirits, and we galloped down 
the long plane, whose six miles seemed to the eye 
not a third so long in this dry, pure air. 

Beaching the river, through the Indian encamp- 
ment, whose mongrel curs alone gave fighting greet- 
ing, it looked deep and was boisterous ; our animals 
hesitated ; and we thought sympathetically of Bayard 
Taylor's sad fortune in making this hard journey into 
the Middle Park to see and try the Hot Springs, and 
then being obliged by the flood to content himself 
with a distant view from this bank of the river. But 
our comrades had gone over ; and the only question 
was where. Looking for their track, directly there 
came galloping to our relief a gayly costumed Indian 
princess, — we were sure she was, — bare-backed for 
her haste to succor, and full of sweet sympathy for 
our anxiety, and tender smiles for our — attractiveness 
in misfortune. Plunging boldly into what seemed to 
us the deepest and swiftest part of the stream, — as 
doubtless it was, — she beckoned us to follow, with 
every enticing expression of eye and lips and hand ; 
and follow we, of course, did, — had it been more 
dangerous we should, — and by folding ourselves up 
on the highest parts of our animals, we got through 



A TROUT AND EASPBERRY SUPPER. 115 

without serious wetting. But it proved that we 
crossed in the wrong place, and that our beautiful 
Indian princess, with beads and feathers and bright 
eyes and seductive ways, was only a plain young 
" buck," — not even a maiden, not so much as a squaw, 
not, to come down to the worst at once, so near to 
glory and gallantry as a first cousin to the Chief 
Nothing less than the welcome we had from one of 
the best women of Colorado, — whom we parted from 
last in Fifth Avenue, and now found spending the 
summer with her family in a log cabin of one room, 
with eight hundred Indians for her only neighbors, — 
and the arrival of her husband from his afternoon's 
fishing with two bushels of fine trout packed over his 
horse's back, — ^here only was adequate soothing and 
consolation for our chagrin. And we didn't go into 
camp that night till after supper, — after supper of 
fresh biscuits, fried trout, and mountain raspberries! 
Let me celebrate these high mountain raspberries 
before the taste goes from my mouth. They grow 
freely on the hill-sides, from seven thousand to ten 
thousand feet up, on bushes from six to eighteen 
inches high, are small and red, and the only wild 
fruit of the region worth eating. They are delicate 
and high-flavored to extreme; their mountain home 
refines and elevates them into the very concentra- 
tion and essence of all fruitiness; they not only 
tickle but intoxicate the palate, — so wild and aro- 
matic, indeed, are they that they need some sugar 
to tone the flavor down to the despiritualized sense 
of a cultivated taste. Yet they are not so sour as 
to require sweetening, — only too high-toned for the 



116 OUR NEW WEST. 

stranger stomach; after sharing their native air a 
few days, we found them best picked and eaten from 
the vines. It is one of the motives of family excur- 
sion parties into the mountains at this season to lay 
in a supply of raspberry jam for the year; while the 
men catch trout, the women pick raspberries, cook 
and sugar them in the camp-kettle, and go home 
laden with this rare fruity sweetmeat. Here in the 
Middle Park, we were kept in full supply of the fresh 
fruit by the Ute squaws, who, going off into the hills 
in the morning, often two together astride the same 
pony, and a little papoose stra23ped on its board over 
the back of one, would come back at night with cups 
and pails of the berries to exchange with the whites 
for their own two great weaknesses, sugar and bis- 
cuit. But the bears get the most of the raspberries 
so far. They are at home with them during all the 
season, and can pick and eat at leisure. 

The Hot Sulphur Springs of the Middle Park are 
both a curiosity and a virtue, and its chief distinction. 
They are a considerable resort already by Coloradians, 
and when convenient roads are made over into the 
Park, there will be a great flow of visitors to them. 
We found twenty or thirty other visitors (in the ripe 
summer,) there, scattered about in the neighborhood, 
while parties were coming and going every day. The 
springs for bathing, and the rivers for fishing, are 
the two great attractions. On the hill-side, fifty feet 
above the Grand River, and a dozen rods away, these 
hot sulphurous waters bubble up at three or four dif- 
ferent places within a few feet, and, coming together 
into one stream, flow over an abrupt bank, say a dozen 



THE HOT SULPHUPw SPRINGS. 117 

feet higli, into a little circular pool or basin below. 
Thence the waters scatter off into the river. But the 
pool and the fall unite to make a charming natural 
bathing-house. You are provided with a hot sitz bath 
and douche together. The stream that pours over 
the precipice into the pool is about as large as would 
flow out of a full water pail turned over, making a 
stream three to five inches in diameter. The water 
is so hot that you cannot at first bear your hand in 
it, being 110° Fahrenheit in temperature, and the 
blow of the falling water and its almost scalding heat 
send the bather shrieking out on his first trial of 
them ; but with light experiments, first an arm, then 
a leg, and next a shoulder, he gradually gets accus- 
tomed to both heat and fall, and can stand directly 
under the stream without flinching, and then he has 
such a bath as he can find nowhere else in the world. 
The invigorating effects are wonderful; there is no 
lassitude, no chill from it, as is usually experienced 
after an ordinary hot bath elsewhere ; though the 
water be 110° warm, and the air 30° to 40° cold, the 
shock of the fall is such a tonic, and the atmosphere 
itself is so dry and inspiring, that no reaction, no un- 
favorable effects are felt, even by feeble persons, in 
coming from one into the other. The first thing in 
the morning, the last at night did we renew our trial 
of this hot douche bath during our brief stay in the 
neighborhood, and the old grew young and the young 
joyous and rampant from the experience. Wonder- 
ful cures are related as having been effected by these 
springs ; the Indians resort to them a good deal, put 
their sick horses into them, and are loth to yield con- 



118 OUR NEW WEST. 

trol of them to the whites ; and in view of their prob- 
able future value, there has been a struggle among 
the latter for their ownership. They are now in the 
hands of Mr. Byers of the Rocky Mountain News at 
Denver, under a title that will probably defy all dis- 
putants; and he proposes to improve the access to 
them and the accommodations for visitors. The wa- 
ters look and taste precisely like those of the Sharon 
Sulphur Springs in New York. The difference is that 
these are hot, those cold. They have deposited sul- 
phur, iron and soda in quantity all about their path, 
and these are their probable chief ingredients. 

Over a little hill from the springs, by the side of 
the Grand River, — the hill, the stream, and a half 
mile between us and the Indian encampment, — we 
settled down in camp for two days and a half, study- 
ing Indian life, catching and eating trout, taking hot 
douche baths in the springs, and making excursions 
over the neighboring hills into side valleys. The 
river before us offered good fishing, but better was 
to be found in Williams Fork, a smaller stream a few 
miles below, where a half day's sport brought back 
from forty to sixty pounds of as fine speckled trout as 
ever came from the brooks or lakes of New England 
They ranged from a quarter of a pound up to two 
pounds weight each, and we had them at every meal. 

The Indians were very neighborly; hill, stream 
and distance were no impediment to their attentions; 
their ponies would gallop with them over all in ^yq 
minutes; and from two to a dozen, men and boys, 
never the squaws, were hanging about our camp fires 
from early morning till late evening. Curiosity, beg- 



THE UTES IN MIDDLE PARK. 119 

ging and good-fellowship were their only apparent 
motives; they did no mischief; they stole nothing, 
though food and clothing, pistols and knives, things 
they coveted and needed above all else, were loosely 
scattered about within reach; they only became a 
nuisance by being everlastingly in the way and spoil- 
ing the enjoyment of one's food by their wistful 
observation. Mrs. Browning says, you remember, 
that observation, which is not sympathy, is simply 
torture. And not a bit of sympathy did they show 
in our eating except as they shared. We were as 
liberal as our limited stores would allow; but the 
capacity of a single Indian's stomach is boundless; 
what could we do for the hundreds ? 

These Utes are a good deal higher grade of Indian 
than I had supposed. They are above the average 
of our Indian tribes in comeliness and intelligence; 
and none perhaps are better behaved or more amen- 
able to direction from the whites. There are seven 
different bands or tribes of them, who occupy the 
Mountains and Parks of Colorado and adjoining sec- 
tions of New Mexico and Utah. The bands number 
from five hundred to one thousand each. This one 
consisted of about seventy-five "lodges" or families, 
each represented by a tent of cloth stretched over a 
bunch of poles gathered at the top, and spreading 
around in a small circle. The poles leave a hole in 
the top for the smoke of a fire in the center beneath, 
and around which the family squat on their blankets 
and pile their stores of food and skins and clothing. 
Probably there were six hundred in the camp near 
us, men, women and children. They look frailer and 



120 OUR NEW WEST. 

feebler than you would expect ; I did not see a single 
Indian who was six feet high or would weigh over 
one hundred and sixty-five pounds; they are all, in- 
deed, under size, and no match in nervous or phys- 
ical force for the average white man. Some of both 
sexes are of very comely appearance, with fine hands 
and delicate feet, and shapely limbs, with a bright 
mulatto complexion, and clear, piercing eyes; but 
their square heads, coarse hair, hideous daubs of yel- 
low and red paint on the cheek and forehead, and 
motley raiment, — here a white man's cast-ofi* hat, coat 
or pantaloons, if squaw a shabby old gown of calico 
or shirt of white cloth, alternate with Indian leggins 
and moccasins, bare legs and feet, a dirty white or 
flaming red blanket, beaded jacket of leather, feath- 
ers, and brass or tin trinkets hanging on the head, 
from the ears, down the back or breast, — all these 
disorderly and unaccustomed combinations give them 
at first a repulsive and finally a very absurd appear- 
ance. The squaws seem to be kept in the back- 
ground, and, except when brides or the wives of a 
chief, dress much more plainly and shabbily than the 
bucks. They are all more modest and deferential in 
appearance and manners than would be expected; 
and I saw no evidence of a taste for strong drink 
among this tribe, — none of them ever asked for it, 
while their desire for food, especially for sugar and 
biscuit, was always manifest. The sugar they gobble 
up without qualification, and such unnatural food as 
this and fine flour breed diseases and weaknesses that 
are already destroying the race. Coughs are frequent, 
and dyspepsia; sickness and deaths are quite common 



HOW THE INDIANS LIVE. 121 ! 

among the children; and this incongruous mixture of 
white man's food and raiment and life with their own, 
which their contact with civilization has led them into, 
is sapping their vitality at its fountains. To make 
matters the worse, they have got hold of our quack 
medicines, and are great custom.ers for Brandreth and 
other pills, with the vain hope of curing their maladies. 
In short, they are simple, savage children, and in that 
definition we find suggested the only proper way for 
the government to treat them. 

Their wealth consists in their horses, which they 
breed or steal from their enemies of other tribes, and 
of which this tribe in the Middle Park must have a 
couple of hundred. They live on the game they can 
find in the Parks and among the Mountains, moving 
from one spot to another, as seasons and years change, 
the proceeds of the skins of the deer and other ani- 
mals they kill, roots, nuts and berries, and the gifts 
of the government and the settlers. It is altogether 
even a precarious and hard reliance ; the game is fast 
disappearing, — save of trout we have not seen enough 
in all our travels among the mountains to feed our 
small party upon, if it had all been caught; and the 
government agents are not always to be depended 
upon in making up deficiencies. Our neighbors had 
lately come over from the North Park, where they 
had hunted antelope to some purpose and with rare 
fortune, killing four thousand in all in two or three 
weeks, half of them in a single grand hunt. They 
cut the meat into thin slices and dry it, so that it 
looks like strips of old leather; and as we went about 

their camp we saw the little, weakly children pulling 
8 



122 OUK NEW WEST. 

away at bits of it, apparently with not very satisfac- 
tory results. Our tribe was in trouble about a chiefs 
the old one was dead, and there were two or three 
contestants for the succession ; but the wrangle was 
not half so fierce as would arise over a contested 
election for mayor of a white man's city. 

Affairs always seemed very quiet in the Indian 
camp in the day-time ; the braves played cards, or did 
a little hunting ; the squaws gathered wood, tanned 
skins, braided lariats, or made fantastic leather gar- 
ments ; the boys chased the ponies ; but at night they 
as invariably appeared to be having a grand pow- 
wow, — rude music and loud shouting rolled up to our 
camp a volume of coarse sound that at first seemed 
frightful, as if the preparatory war-whoop for a grand 
scalping of their white neighbors, but which we 
learned to regard as the most innocent of barbaric 
amusements. Though these Utes are quite peaceable 
and even long-suffering towards the whites, they bear 
eternal enmity to the Indian tribes of the Plains, and 
are always ready to have a fight with them. Each 
party is strongest on its own territory, — the Arapahoes, 
Camanches and Cheyennes on the prairies, and the 
Utes among the hills ; and each, while eager to receive 
the party of the other part at home, rarely go a-visit- 
ing. The Plains Indians are better mounted and bet- 
ter armed ; chiefly because, keeping up nearly constant 
warfare with the whites, they have exacted prompter 
presents and larger pay from the government. The 
Utes complain, and with reason, that their friendliness 
causes them to be neglected and cheated ; while their 
and our enemies thrive on government bounty. 



long's peak. 123 

There is now a plan for all the Ute tribes to go to- 
gether into the south-western corner of Colorado, 
away from the mines and the whites, and there, upon 
abundant pastures and fruitful mountains, engage in 
a pastoral and half agricultural life ; to set up stock- 
raising on a large scale, and such tillage as they can 
bring themselves to, under the j^rotection and aid of 
the government. The scheme is a good one ; the In- 
dians agree to it ; and the bargain has been made by 
the government agents here, — all that is needed is for 
the authorities at Washington to furnish the means 
for carrying it into execution. So far as our observa- 
tion extends, the greatest trouble with our Indian 
matters lies at Washington ; the chief of the cheating 
and stupidity gathers there ; while the Indian agents 
here upon the ground are, if not immaculate, certainly 
more intelligent, sensible, and practical, and truer to 
the good of the settler and the Indian, than their 
superiors at the seat of government. 

We were loth to leave the Hot Springs and the 
Middle Park; but our time was up. We looked 
longingly through the hills up the valley of the 
Grand; beyond I knew there lay a wilder country 
than we had seen, and under the shadow of Long's 
Peak, Grand Lake itself, a large and fine sheet of 
water, alive with trout, and rich in commanding 
beauty. Long's Peak, too, just ascended for the first 
time, offered glorious temptation in a hard mountain 
climb, and recompensing views of continental sweep 
and grandeur. No fewer than thirty-nine lakes on 
the sides of that and the neighboring mountains, and 
all as high up as ten thousand feet, can be seen at 



124 OUR NEW WEST. 

once from this peak. We galloped over the bare hills 
the other way, and looked off down the valley. Bits 
of rare stone, agates and jaspers and crystals and 
petrifactions, lay everywhere about; and over the 
river, a dozen miles off, was the famous " moss agate 
patch," where these peculiar crystallizations covered 
the ground ; Williams Fork came rollicking down the 
opposite hill-sides through a line of trees, with in- 
numerable breakfasts of uncaught trout, and a wide 
green meadow at the mouth for camping ground ; 
while far on in the landscape, the Grand found mag- 
nificent pathway for twenty-five miles through a 
broad field of heavy grass, — the gem, the kernel of 
the Middle Park ; then turning abruptly west, it shot 
through the mountains by a canyon, lapped up the 
Blue on the other side, and, thus strengthened, poured 
out southward for the Colorado and the Pacific Ocean. 
It was this way we would have gone out, — down the 
Grand and up the Blue, all within the capacious 
boundaries of the Middle Park, — had not time and 
the provision bag forbade. 

So, turning reluctantly back on our entering path, 
we compromised with our hunger for new scenery by 
taking the Boulder Pass out. This lies opposite the 
Berthoud at the lower end of the Park. Our party 
was reduced by the earlier return of Governor Hunt 
and the Indian agent, who, having some negotiations 
with the Indians, had taken out a dozen or twenty 
of the leading braves with them, to seek arguments 
where freights were not so expensive. The Indian 
sees the point of an idea always through a full stomach 
and a warm back, and it required a whole beef and 



AN AUGUST SNOW-STORM. 125 

several barrels of flour and sugar and a dozen blankets 
to prove to them that a petty technical amendment by 
the Senate to their last treaty was just right. Going 
up the Boulder ascent, we found thicker and greener 
grass and richer forests and flowers than in the open 
Park, and camped by a beaver settlement at the hight 
of ten to eleven thousand feet. In the morning, the 
water was freezing, and the grass and shrubs were 
stiff with frost, so stiff and yet so dry from lack of 
moisture in the air, that neither then, nor after the 
sun had softened them, was there any water to be 
rubbed off from them. It was a perfectly dry freeze, 
and this is why these summer frosts do no more harm 
to vegetation, and delicate flowers thaw out and go 
on in their sweet short life in these high mountains. 
The clouds gathered, and the rain-drops fell, as we 
finished breakfast and packed and saddled for the cold 
hard ride over the mountains. In an hour we were 
out of the timber, and a dreary waste of rock, relieved 
only by a thin grass at first, then by mosses, and al- 
ways by flowers, lay before and all around us. The 
storm grew thick and fast, hail and snow; the trail 
wasted itself in the open area; the ground was being 
rapidly covered with the white snow ; straggling was 
forbidden, and " close up " and " push on " were the 
orders from the front. The promised view of park 
and plains, of range on range, was lost ; only thick, 
dark clouds, hanging over impenetrable abysses, were 
around and below us ; the storm beat and bit like an 
outraged conscience; beards gathered snow and ice; 
the mules and horses winced under the blast, — it was 
a forlorn looking company for a pleasure party. 



126 OUR NEW WEST. 

But there was exhilaration in the unseasonable 
struggle; there was something jolly in the idea of 
thus confounding the almanacs, and finding February 
in August. At the summit of the Pass, — thirteen 
thousand feet high, — the storm abated its intensity 
to let us dismount and pick out of the snow the little 
yellow flowers that crept up among the rotks every- 
where. Then it rolled over again, and now with 
thunder and lightning, pealing and flashing close 
around us. Here our laggard pack mules Y\^ith their 
drivers came hurrying up and forward; the leader 
saying as he spurred them by that perhaps we might 
like it, but for him "hell was pleasanter and safer than 
a thunder-storm on the range." 

But as we descended the elements calmed; the 
clouds opened visions of the new valleys, and flashes 
of sunlight unveiled the great mysteries of the up- 
per mountains. Summer was again around us; and 
though it was hardly noon, the spot we had reached 
was so rarely charming, and the sun so refreshing, 
that we halted, loosed our animals, made our cofiee, 
lunched, and basked on the rocks in the sunshine for 
a long, delightful hour. We were on a narrow ridge 
of the mountain, shooting out into the valley, and not 
over twenty feet wide. On either side there was a 
sharp almost perpendicular descent for at least one 
thousand feet in one case, and seven hundred and 
fifty in the other. At the foot on our right were two 
lovely lakes, one almost an absolute circle, rock and 
grass bound, fed by great snow-banks between us and 
them, and feeding in turn the South Boulder Creek. 
On our left, a grassy slope, so steep that it was im- 



WE SLEEP IN A BAKN. 127 

possible to walk down except in long zigzags, and far 
away at tlie bottom among the trees ran tlie North 
Boulder from out the mountains. Everywhere about 
us, where the snow and the rocks left space, were the 
greenest of grass, the bluest of harebells, the reddest 
of painter's brush, the yellowest of sunflowers and 
buttercups. All, with brightest of sun and bluest of 
sky, made up such a contrast to our morning ride that 
we were all in raptures with the various beauties of 
the scene, and feel still that no spot in all our travel 
is more sacred to beauty than this of our noon camp 
on Boulder. But, as if to frame and fasten the pic- 
ture still more strongly, we were hardly in the saddle 
again, before the storm set in anew, and we rode all 
the afternoon under snow or rain. 

There is what is called a road over into Middle Park 
by this Pass, and strong wagons with oxen or mules 
make the passage ; but the difiiculties they encounter 
are frightful, — mud and rocks, rivers and ravines, — 
it is hard to imagine how any wheels can surmount 
them and remain whole, — and few do. Our trail fol- 
lowed the road only in part ; it made short cuts over 
hills, through woods, and across valleys, and was full 
of variety, annoyance, sometimes of difliculty ; but 
we found all less vexatious than the descent of Ber- 
thoud Pass, and, following the South Boulder Creek, 
came at last, wet and weary, into the nearly deserted 
mining village of South Boulder. Here we found 
welcome around the fire of the post-office ; a deserted 
cabin was thrown open to us for our baggage and our 
meals ; and a big barn's loft with fresh hay furnished 
a magnificent bedroom. We dried, we ate, having 



128 OUR NEW WEST. 

fresh meat, cream and vegetables added to our bill of 
fare, and' we slept, all in luxury. Half the village 
was preoccupied by a large party of men and women, 
some twenty to thirty, from the villages farther down 
the valley, on their way into the Park by the road 
we had come out. They had ox teams for their bag- 
gage, saddle animals to carry themselves, and a cow 
to furnish fresh milk; and thus generously equipped 
were jollily entering upon camp life among the moun- 
tains for ten days or a fortnight, after the manner of 
the residents of the State. 

A rapid morning gallop over intervening hills, waste 
with the axman's greedy work, or the miner's greedier 
wash, brought our party into the civilization of the 
Clear Creek Valley, — to taverns, telegraphs, and stage 
lines. 



YII. 

MOUNTAIN CLIMBING AND CAMP LITE. 

Up Gray's Peak from Georgetown— The View from it— A Saturday 
Night Camp on the Snake River— Sunday with a "Prospector"— 
A Butter and Milk Ranch in the Mountains— The Valley of the 
Blue and its Mining Operations— Over the Breckinridge Pass in a 
Thunder-Storm— Hamilton and South Park— Reunion with the 
Grand Party — Ascent of Mount Lincoln — A Snow-Storm on the 
Summit— Montgomery— The Everlasting Plattea— The Side Valleys 
of the South Park. 

With appetites only whetted for mountain experi- 
ences, with curiosity only stimulated to observe the 
phenomena of the grand elevated Parks of Colorado, 
by our week's trip into Middle Park, we were soon in 
the saddle again for a cHmb up the two most con- 
spicuous peaks of the central range. Gray and Lin- 
coln, and a journey through the South Park. There 
were but three of us to make the ascent of Gray's 
Peak ; and such a load as we put on our single pack 
mule : a great overtopping cube of blankets and sacks 
of meat and bread, and four little feet sticking out 
beneath, were all that could be seen as it went shak- 
ing along on a mysterious trot. Sending the outfit 
and our guide by an easier path over to where we 
intended to camp for the night, our Httle party started 



130 OUR NEW WEST. 

early of a clear August morning from Georgetown, — 
distance fifteen miles to Gray's Peaks, and, by virtue 
of mines among the mountains, a good wagon road 
two-thirds the way. 

It was an object to get to the summit as soon as 
possible, before afternoon haze or cloud should dim 
the view, and we galloped rapidly through aspen 
groves, then among larger pines, by the side of rap- 
idly descending streams, around and around, up and 
up, and finally out above the trees, where grass and 
flowers had all life to themselves, and again above 
these and only thin mosses lived among the stones, 
and yet still higher, where the mountains became 
great walls of rock, or immense mounds of broken 
stone, as if they had been run through a crusher for 
the benefit of Mr. Macadam. Such was the character 
of Gray's Peaks. Great patches of snow divided 
place with the rocks, and fed the clear, cold rivulets 
that started out from every sheltered nook or side of 
the mountains; but they only added to the cold 
dreariness of the scene. The only life was grasshop- 
pers, — here they were still by thousands, by millions, 
sporting in the air and frisking over the snow, but 
the latter's chill seemed soon to overcome their life, 
for they lay dead in countless numbers upon its white 
surface. In some places the dead grasshoppers could 
have been shoveled up by the bushels, and down at 
the edges of the snow cold grasshopper soup was to 
be had ad libitum. There was a feast here for the 
bears, but we could see none enjoying it. 

Gray's Peaks, — great mounds or monuments of 
loose, broken stone, — shoot up sharply from a single 



\ 



THE SUMMIT OF GRAY's PEAKS. 131 

base, in the midst of very high mountains all about. 
Their sharpness exaggerates their superior hight. 
Below, the two seem but a rifle shot apart; above, 
they are manifestly several miles away from each 
other; but their common paternity, their similarity 
in form, effect and views, entitle them to bear the 
common name, which was given to them by Dr. C. C. 
Parry of St. Louis, who has been, so far, the most 
thorough scientific explorer of the higher mountain 
regions of Colorado, and in honor of the distinguished 
Cambridge botanist. Professor Gray. There are now 
trails for horses to the top of each, — that to the higher 
was nearly finished while we were there ; and though 
the path to the lower is the more easy and familiar, 
our ambition was not content with anything less than 
the highest, and spite of fatigue and cold we struck 
out for it. Going through a snow-drift at least fifteen 
feet high, and coming out above all snow deposits, we 
fastened our animals with stones at the end of the 
path, and slowly toiled the remaining quarter of a 
mile over the loose rocks, — the thin air obliging us to 
stop every three minutes to gain our breath, — and at 
high noon sat upon the highest peak of the highest 
known mountain of the great Eocky Mountain range. 
Dr. Parry made the lower peak fourteen thousand 
two hundred and fifty-one feet high; the higher must 
be at least fourteen thousand five hundred. 

The scene before us was ample recompense for 
double the toil. It was the great sight in all our 
Colorado travel. In impressiveness, — in overcoming- 
ness, it takes rank w^ith the three or four great natu- 
ral wonders of the world, — with Niagara Falls from 



132 OUR NEW WEST. 

the Tower, with the Yo Semite Valley from Inspira- 
tion Point. No Swiss mountain view carries such 
majestic sweep of distance, such sublime combination 
of hight and breadth and depth ; such uplifting into 
the presence of God; such dwarfing of the mortal 
sense, such welcome to the immortal thought. It 
was not beauty, it was sublimity ; it was not power, 
nor order, nor color, it was majesty; it was not a 
part, it was the whole ; it was not man but God, that 
was about, before, in us. Mountains and mountains 
everywhere, — even the great Parks, even the un- 
ending Plains seemed but patches among the white 
ranges of hills stretching above and beyond one an- 
other. We looked into Middle Park below us on the 
north; over a single line of mountains into South 
Park, below us on the south, — but beyond both were 
the unending peaks, the everlasting hills. To the 
west, the broadest, noblest ranges of mountains, — 
there seemed no breaks among them except such as 
served to mark the end of one and the beginning of 
another, and no possible limit to their extension. The 
snow whitened all, covered many, and brought out 
their lines in conspicuous majesty. Over one of the 
largest and finest, the snow-fields lay in the form of 
an immense cross, and by this it is known in all the 
mountain views of the State. It is as if God has set 
His sign. His seal. His promise there, — a beacon upon 
the very center and hight of the Continent to all its 
people and all its generations. Beyond this uplifted 
what seemed to be the only mountain in all the 
range of view higher than the peak upon which we 
stood. It is named Sopris Peak upon some of the 



THE YIEW FKOM GKAY'S PEAKS. 133 

maps, but has never been explored, and is more com- 
pletely covered with snow than any other. 

Turning to the east we find relief in the softer and 
yet majestic and unending vision of the Plains, — on, 
on they stretch in everlasting green and gray until 
lost in the dim haze that is just beginning to rise 
along the horizon. Directly below us, great rough 
seams in the mountain sides, as if fire and water had 
been at work for ages to waste and overturn ; dreary 
areas of red and brown and gray rocks; masses of 
timber ; bits of green in the far-down valley ; flashes 
of darkness where little lakes nestled amid the rocks, 
fed by snow, and feeding the streams, — Nature every- 
where in her original forms, and her abounding waste 
of wealth, as if here was the great supply store and 
workshop of Creation, the fountain of Earth. Look- 
ing from side to side, above, below, and around, — im- 
pressed, oppressed everywhere with the presence of 
the Beginning; it was almost unconsciously and in- 
stinctively that we turned again and at last, as Mrs. 
Browning makes Komney Leigh, "toward the east :" — 

" where faint and fair, 



Along the tingling desert of tlie sky, 
Beyond the circle of the conscious hills, 
Were laid in jasper-stone as clear as glas3 
The first foundations of that new, near Day, 
Which should be builded out of heaven, to God." 

It was difficult to leave this citadel of earth, this 
outpost of heaven; but our time and our strength 
were both exhausted. The long gallop, the hard 
climb, more, the excitement of the vision of earth 
and sky at this elevation of over fourteen thousand 



134 OUE NEW WEST. 

feet above the ocean level had used up our nerve- 
power; the cool breezes^ too, chilled us; and after 
lunching, we regained our horses, and pushed down 
the other side of the mountain from that we came up. 

There was only a dim trail to follow, running hither 
and thither around and among the hills, and then 
across and along the valleys of the streams that came 
in from every mountain crevice and snow-bank. We 
crossed Colfax Park, a little gem of grass and flowers, 
with Colfax Lake at its head, a great rock bowl of 
clear water, high in the hill-side, and pouring its sur- 
plus over a sharp natural wall of stone, — so named by 
an enthusiastic and appreciative miner in the lower 
valley, who would hardly be reconciled with us that 
we had not brought the Yice-President to witness how 
happily and fitly he had been honored here. We 
passed also through many a beaver village ; but the 
inhabitants gave us no visible welcome; they mod- 
estly let their works speak for them. The woods 
grew thick and mellow; the aspen tender, the spruce 
silver-hung and silver-tongued; and we came at last, 
— a long ten miles from the summit of Gray's Peak, — 
to our proposed camping spot, the junction of two 
forks of the Snake River and of the two trails from 
Georgetown. 

Here, the grass was abundant, the stream ran pure 
and strong, unpolluted by miner's mud, fuel was 
plenty, even the mosquitoes sang a welcome, but no 
guide, no pack-mule was to be seen, no blankets, no 
food, no nothing, that belonged to us, but weariness 
and hunger. We sounded the war-whoop of the 
country, — a shrill, far-reaching cry; and back the 



THE CAMP ON SNAKE EIYER. 135 

voices came, not only from our lagging outfit, but 
from miners here and there among the hills, just 
finishing their day's work, and wondering who had 
come into their wilderness now. The mules took up 
the refrain, and bellowed from "depths that overflow" 
their welcome to each other. Soon we were at home, 
the coffee brewing, the ham stewing, and a hole 
through the peach can ; under the frosts of night and 
the smoke of the camp fire, the merry mosquitoes 
flew away ; our tent was raised, our blankets spread ; 
and the peace of Saturday night and a day richly 
spent reigned over us four and no more. 

But camp life is not all comfort. That very blessed 
Saturday night on the Snake River, the wind took 
turns in coming out of the three or four valleys that 
converged upon our camping-ground, and blew the 
virulent smoke in upon us. Shift the fire, change 
the blanket, still the smoke followed us, as if charmed, 
and was discomfort and sleeplessness to all, poison to 
at least one. There was a yearning for something 
delicate for the Sunday morning breakfast, — a bit of 
cream toast, or a soft egg, and some milk-amelior- 
ated coffee ; but the knurly little " Jack," that carried 
our " bed and board," had no provision for sensitive 
stomachs, and we had to take our victual and drink 
"straight," — plain ham and bread and butter and 
black coffee, — or go without. But that best and 
cheapest of doctors and nurses, the sun came to our 
relief; and later in the day a pitcher of buttermilk 
completed and capped his healing triumphs. One of 
my companions of three years ago, records my then 
sarcastic contempt for buttermilk, but I take it all 



136 OUR NEW WEST. 

back now, — no cup of it shall ever pass from my lips 
again other than empty. It comes to a faint and for- 
lorn stomach like woman's sympathy to a bruised heart. 

We sauntered ten or a dozen miles that day, down 
the close bound Snake Valley, chiefly through woods, 
occasionally across an open park, fishing a little, and 
chatting a good deal with Commodore Decatur, a 
quaint old miner of the valley, who, "prospecting" 
for society that day, had struck a "lead" in us. If 
I could tell you his story, it would rival one of Charles 
Eeade's most romantic and mysterious novels, and 
show you how thickly studded an American life can 
be with tragedies. He is an old Greek philosopher, — 
with an American variation; as wise as Socrates, as 
enthusiastic as a child, as mysterious in life and pur- 
pose as William H. Seward or an Egyptian sphynx, 
as religious as a Methodist class-leader. Our morning 
ride brought us out into a grand opening in the valley. 
The timber disappeared; the hills sharpened into a 
dead wall on one side, and swept away in soft rolling 
outlines on the other ; a wide stretch of intervale lay 
between, while pretty groves of trees tempered the 
distant knolls and broke the abruptness of forests 
beyond. We were again, indeed, in Middle Park, 
though a high range of mountains and a long, hard 
ride separated us from that part of it which we visited 
the week before. 

Under a bluff in this fine area, we came upon the 
"Georgia Ranch." Here in a cabin of two rooms, 
with a log milk-house outside, the only dwellers in 
this rich pasture park, were a man, his wife and 
daughter; their home and farm were in Southern 



A MILK AND BUTTER EANCH. 137 

Colorado, but they had come up here in the spring 
with forty or fifty cows, and were making one hun- 
dred and forty-five pounds of butter a week, and sell- 
ing it to the miners in the cabins and camps among 
the hills ten to fifteen miles around, for seventy-five 
cents a pound. When the snows begin to fall in 
October, they will drive the herd back to their south- 
ern pastures; the increase of the cows will pay all 
expenses, and the one hundred dollars or more a 
week cash for butter and milk is clear profit. The 
dairy cabin was a "sight to behold," such piles of 
fresh golden butter, such shelves of full pans of milk, 
— there wasn't room for another pound or pan; and 
yet the demand far exceeds the supply, — it was a 
favor to be allowed to purchase the treasures of 
" Georgia Ranch." It was our Commodore's Sunday 
diversion to ride down these dozen miles, fill his 
weekly butter-pail and his milk-can, and gallo23 back 
in season for a Sunday night supper with his cabin 
comrade of " mush and milk." 

These mining hermits in the mountains manage to 
live well, — they become adepts in cooking; with flour 
and meal and fresh meat, potatoes and onions, dried 
and canned fruits, the bill of fare is ap^Dctizing ; and 
the cost of the "best tables" is from seventy-five 
cents to one dollar a day. Nor are they always thus 
exiles from society; their season in the hills, hunting 
new lodes or developing old ones, is confined to the 
summer; when cold and snow come, they flee to the 
villages or to Denver, — to live as leisurely and lux- 
uriously as what they have made the past season or 
hope to make the next will permit 



138 OUR NEW WEST. 

We "packed" a bottle of cream, filled our water 
canteen with milk, took Decatur's Methodistic ben- 
ediction, — "May the Lord take a liking to you," — 
with a hearty " amen," and rode down the valley, by 
numerous soda and other mineral springs, three or 
four miles farther, to our camp for the night. This 
was at a still more picturesque spot, — a trinity of 
rivers, a triangle of mountains. The Blue and the 
Snake Eivers and Ten Mile Creek all meet and 
mingle here within a few rods ; each a strong, 
hearty stream from its own independent circle of 
mountains ; and while the waters unresisting swam 
together, the hills stood apart and away, frowning in 
dark forest and black rock, and cold with great snow- 
fields, overlooking the scene, which green meadows, 
and blue sky, and warm sun mellowed and brightened. 
A neck of land, holding abundant grass and fuel, be- 
tween the three rivers at the point of junction, of- 
fered a magnificent camping-ground. It is a spot to 
settle down upon and keep house at for a week. Ten 
Mile Creek overflows with trout ; one of our party took 
ten pounds out of a single hole in a less number of 
minutes, — a single fish weighing about three pounds; 
and deer and game birds must be readily findable in 
the neighborhood. The Blue isn't blue, — its waters 
have been troubled by the miners, and it gives its 
name and mud color to the combined stream, which 
flows ofl* through an open, inviting valley to join the 
Grand, and thence to make up the grand Colorado of 
the West. 

We had a lesson in precaution, after unloading, and 
proceeding to make camp here, by finding that no- 



UP THE VALLEY OF THE BLUE. 139 

body had any matches -, we could not shoot flame out 
of our metallic-cartridge pistols ; nor had we the Li- 
dian accomphshment of rubbing fire out of two sticks; 
so the best mule was put over the road to the "Ranch" 
and back at a very un-mule-like-gait^ to bring us the 
means of kindling our camp fire. But we had a 
sumptuous supper of cream toast and trout, with 
milk for our coffee, and a sweet night in camp, 
though lulled to sleep by the roll of thunder and 
the patter of a brisk shower, with high w^ind and 
sharp lightning ; and we turned reluctantly up the 
valley of the Blue, the next morning, with the reso- 
lution to come to stay at this point another season. 

The day's ride was along the Blue to its source in 
the mountains, over these and down into the South 
Park. The first eight miles was through a fine open 
grazing country, and we found a magnificent herd of 
fat cattle, strongly marked with Durham blood, enjoy- 
ing its rich grasses. They had been sent up here to 
fatten for the summer from some of the ranches of 
the lower valleys, and, perhaps, to furnish fresh beef 
to the mining camps, which are quite numerous among 
the side valleys of the neighborhood. All the morn- 
ing we were in sight of the ditches that had been 
built to carry water to the rich beds of sand that 
were in course of being washed over for gold deposits 
at various localities in the valleys. One of these 
ditches is twelve miles long ; tapping the Blue away 
up in the mountains, it takes a vigorous stream along 
and around the mountain sides, up and down, from 
gulch to gulch, parting with portions at different 
points on the route to little companies of miners at 



140 OUR NEW WEST. 

SQ much per foot; and, deployed into sand-banks, 
swept through long boxes, tarried in screens and by 
petty dams, it does its work of separating the tiny 
particles of gold from the earth, and finds its way 
back to the parent stream, miles from where it left it, 
but bringing the pollutions of the world and of labor 
with it. Many thousands of dollars are invested in 
these ditches; sometimes they are made and owned 
by individuals, who also work the mines or deposits 
of gold to which they lead, but oftener now they 
belong to companies that have no other interest than 
to sell water from them to those who mine alone. 
Generally they have passed out of the hands of their 
builders, who rarely realized anything but exjDCcta- 
tions, vast and vain, from them. 

Breckinridge, a village of twenty cabins, ten thou- 
sand feet high among the mountains, is the center of 
these upper mining interests. Pleasant enough in 
summer, life here in winter, when the miners gather 
in from their surrounding camps, must be little better 
than hibernation. There are good wagon roads from 
the village, into all the neighboring valleys and over 
the Breckinridge Pass in the continental range, to 
South Park. We rode up through open woods, flower- 
endowed meadows, a broken, various and interesting 
mountain country, often giving majestic views of 
the higher and snow-crowned peaks, with glimpses of 
valleys and parks below and beyond. The Pass is i 

just above the timber line, about twelve thousand 
feet high, and as we mounted it, a cold storm gath- 
ered upon the snow-fields above us, wheeled from 
peak to peak in densely black clouds, and soon broke 



THROUGH THUNDER, LIGHTNING AND HAIL. 141 

in gusts of wind, in vivid lightning, in startlingly close 
and loud claps of thunder, in driving snow, in pelting 
hail, in drizzling rain. We were below the storm's 
fountain, but near enough to see all its grand move- 
ments, to feel its awful presence, to be shaken with 
fear, to gather inspiration. The rapidity of its pas- 
sage from side to side, from peak to peak, was wonder- 
ful ; the crashing loudness of its thunderous discharges 
awful; one moment we felt like "fleeing before the 
Lord," the next charmed and awed into rest in His 
presence. 

But it was dreary enough, when the thundering 
and the flashing ceased, and the clouds stopped their 
majestic movement, and hung in deep mists over all 
the mountains and the valleys, and the rain poured 
ceaselessly down. The poetry was gone, and gather- 
ing overcoats and rubbers closely about us, we bent 
our heads to the undeviating shower, and pushed 
gloomily and ghastfully on. It seemed a long ride 
down mountain side and through valley to Hamilton, 
— woods that made us feel even more pitiful; open 
valleys that made the rain more pitiless; streams 
twisted out of place and shape by ruthless miners ; 
desolated cabins, doorless, windowless, — even the 
storm was more inviting ; Tarryall, where thousands 
dug and washed sands for gold three and four years 
ago, and now only two or three cabins, mud-patched 
and turf-warmed, sent forth the smoke of home ; a 
solitary dirt-washer, trudging along from his day's 
mountain work, with dinner-pail and pickax; — out at 
last, where, through the opening mists, we could see 
the long, level reaches of South Park, and into Ham- 



142 OUR NEW WEST. 

ilton, — fifty or more vacant and decaying cabins and 
two log hotels, — where one thousand men mined in 
'60 to '64^ and gayety and vice reigned, and now a 
dozen or twenty men and three or four women were 
the entire population ; a grimy, dirty-looking village 
of the past, for all the world in the storm like an old 
Swiss mountain village, with manure heaps in front 
of the houses, and a few sorry looking horses and 
mules scattered about the pastures. 

It was a comfortless promise after so comfortless a 
ride. We passed on by the village to a plateau above 
the river, and tried to make camp ; but everything 
was wetj — the water especially so, and very muddy ; 
we couldn't start a fire ; our guide was obstinate for 
going to the hotel, and after long struggling against 
it, we capitulated and went. We gained shelter and 
warmth, and a good supper, and chapters of country 
experience around the fire with the tobacco, and a 
small bed for two ; but there are more real comfort 
and better air and greater cleanliness and real inde- 
pendence in camp than in these pent-up mountain 
inns. It was hard to accept such compromise with 
civilization after the luxuries we had enjoyed in our 
ground and tent homes. 

But with the morning at Hamilton came sunshine 
and beautiful views of the South Park country, that 
lay spread out before us in unending stretches of 
green prairie ; here lifted up by a perfect embank- 
ment to a new level, and going on again in another 
plain ; there rolling off into hills with patches of ever- 
green ; now bringing down from the mountains, still 
through pastures green, tributaries to the main river; 



THE SOUTH PAKK — EEUNIO]^". 143 

offering on every hand glimpses of beckoning repeti- 
tions of itself through and over hills ; while ail around 
in the distant horizon huge mountains stood sentinel, 
guarding this great upper garden-spot of the State, 
as if jealous lest its frontiers be invaded, its lands 
despoiled. No so fine a combination of the grand 
beauty of the plains, of the lovely beauty of the 
hills, of the majestic beauty of the mountains, ever 
spread itself before my eyes. Water-courses were 
abundant, groves and forests were placed with suffi- 
cient frequency to diversify the scene and relieve and 
kindle the eye, while mountains, near and remote, 
gave their impressive sanction and completeness to 
the picture. The coloring was brighter yet softer 
than in Middle Park; and we felt that Colorado had 
indeed reserved her choicest landscape treasures for 
us to the last. 

Before noon, six miles away, we caught sight of 
our companions from Denver, coming over the hill, — 
some on horseback, some in light carriages, and the 
rest in wagons with the baggage ; Vice-President, 
Governors, Indian Agents, mothers, sons, daughters, 
wives, babies, — two or three dozen of them in all. 
They looked like one of the patriarchal families of 
Old Testament times, sons and daughters, servants 
and asses, moving from one country to another, in 
obedience to high commandment; and as if repre- 
sentatives of another tribe, w^e rode out to greet and 
welcome them to our goodly land. We propitiated 
their stomachs with our treasured big trout; and 
after lunch upon the open prairie, the grand caravan 
moved on, in somewhat disorderly array. 



144 OUR NEW WEST. 

We made a dozen miles, along the northern line of 
the Park, over a rich, rolling country, starred by oc- 
casional lakes, darkened by frequent forests, shadowed 
by the everlasting snow-fields of the mountains. The 
inevitable afternoon storm came upon us midway, and 
we rode into Fairplay, the most considerable town of 
the South Park country, variously wet and considera- 
bly disgusted. The ladies stopped by the hospitable 
fires of the village, while the men went on, and made 
camp on a hill overlooking the valley, shaded by a 
few old and stunted pines, and circled by a miner's 
ditch full of furiously running water. Here half a 
dozen fires were kindled, as many tents stretched, and 
the storm passing away, everybody came into camp, 
and sleep followed supper to the satisfaction of all. 

It was a happy thought to call the parent mountain 
of this region, of the whole Rocky mountain range 
proper, for the President who guided the Nation so 
proudly through civil war and slavery to peace and 
freedom. Peer among presidents and mother among 
mountains is Lincoln. The higher Gray's Peak is as 
high, possibly a hundred or two feet higher; but 
Mount Lincoln is broader, more majestic, more moun- 
tainous. Out from its wide-spreading folds stretch 
three or four lines of snow-covered mountains ; within 
its recesses spring the waters of three great rivers, 
the Platte, the Arkansas and the Colorado, that fertil- 
ize the plains of half the Continent, and bury them- 
selves, at last, two in the Atlantic and the third in the 
Pacific Ocean. This is the initial point in our geog- 
raphy, and a fountain-head of national wealth and 
strength. This geographical parentage, the repre- 



ASCENT OF MOUNT LINCOLN. 145 

sentative association of its name and office, and the 
enthusiasm kindled by our accounts of the view from 
Gray's Peak, spread a zest among the larger party for 
climbing Mount Lincoln; and though the morning 
was strewn with showers, and huge black clouds hung 
over the mountain tops in alternation with great rifts 
of sunshine, these revealing fresh-fallen fields of snow, 
we determined to take our chances, and galloped ofi", 
a dozen strong, women and men, up the valley to 
Montgomery, a dozen or fifteen miles from Fairplay. 

The rain poured relentlessly for the first two hours' 
ride ; but then the sunshine came out, and joined by 
half a dozen more at Montgomery, we turned directly 
up the mountain side. For two or three miles there 
is a rough wagon road ; beyond that not even a trail 
that is fixed. Catching sight of the distant goal, we 
scattered irregularly over the intervening slopes and 
ravines ; first through richest grasses and most abun- 
dant and high-colored flowers ; then across huge snow- 
fields, so soft under the summer sun, that our animals 
could not bear us without floundering in dangerous 
depths, and we had to dismount and walk and lead ; 
next over wide but steep fields of thin mosses, deli- 
cate in leaf and blossom to the last degree, pink and 
white and blue, — the very final condensed expression 
of nature ; all beauty, all tenderness, all sweetness in 
essence ; and at last, beyond all growth, beyond all 
snow, out upon miles of broken stones, immeasurably 
deep, as steep as they could li^ 

To ascend over these . was tough work ; the wind 
blew biting cold ; clouds charged with hail and snow 
every few minutes swept over, through us; the air 



146 OUR NEW WEST. 

was so rare that the animals labored for breath at 
every step ; the sides so steep and the stones so loose 
as to render the footing fickle, even dangerous; we 
could only make upward progress in slow degree by 
long^ zigzag courses back and forth; and every few 
minutes the panting, trembling horses and mules 
would come to a stubborn stop in very fear of their 
footing. Then we had to dismount and reassure 
them by leading the way, or find firmer paths. But 
at last we got as far as horses could go; and a climb 
of ^Ye hundred feet remained for ourselves of even 
steeper and still loose-lying rocks to the summit. 
Then we found our hearts and lungs, if never before ; 
work as fast as they could, shaking our very frames 
in the haste to keep up with their duty, we still had 
to stop and rest every thirty or forty feet, and let 
them get even with the air. 

Finally on the very crest of the mammoth moun- 
tain, the one spot higher than all others, than all 
around so far as could be seen. Our hopes our fears 
belied, our fears our hopes in turn; the sweep of the 
horizon was broken by thick clouds; and we could 
not compare the view with its rival, from Gray's 
Peak; but the contending elements lent a new maj- 
esty, almost a terror to the scene. Sunshine and 
storm were continually at war ; clouds and clearness 
constantly changing places; now it was all light to 
the east, and Gray's Peak and all the intervening 
mountains to the Plains, the Plains themselves, Den- 
ver itself glowed in golden sunshine, while in the 
west everything was shrouded in blackness and des- 
pair; then the clouds came upon and over us, pelting 



THE VIEW FROM MOUNT LINCOLiN". 147 

US with snow, and passing by opened great lines of 
brightness to the west, and we could see on to inde- 
finable distances of snow-covered mountains, — Sopris 
Peak, the mountain with the snow-cross, a continent 
of rocks and snow, dreary yet beautiful in color, ma- 
jestic yet. fascinating in form. So w^e caught long 
narrow glimpses of the South Park, and the Arkansas 
Valley, south of us; and Pike's Peak in one direction 
and Long's Peak in another were not denied us, — 
sentinels of nature in the far off corners of the State, 
rising above clouds, over intervening storms; while 
deep chasms, yawning recesses opened in ghasthness 
through the clouds below us on every side. 

The whole vision, fickle, forbidding in many fea- 
tures, always surprising, never satisfying, piquing 
us by what was withheld, astonishing us by what was 
given, though disappointing our hopes, yet was vastly 
finer than our fears. It was the wildest of mountain 
views and mountain experiences, such as may be 
welcomed as a variety, though not chosen as the re- 
ward for a single excursion. Similar experiences in 
the high Alps are tamer every way; there is less 
variety in the landscape ; less color in the mountains 
and the atmosphere ; above all, less sweep of distance, 
less piling of mountain on mountain, through the 
long openings in the clouds. 

We waited as long as the freezing air and the driv- 
ing snow would let us for wider views of earth and 
sky; but clouds and storm growing denser, and hav- 
ing finished our lunch of sandwiches and sardines, 
pickles and peaches, and, coffee being out of the 
question, a necessary flask of whisky, we retraced 



148 OUR NEW WEST. 

the tedious, hard-going way to the valley. Far up, 
where only rocks reigned, beautiful white and blue 
birds, like large doves, but called mountain partridges, 
trotted or flew tamely about us ; and a revolver sadly 
repaid the faith of some of them. Back among the 
flowers, we gathered large bouquets of bright paint- 
er's brush, harebells, fringed gentians, lupins and 
quaint grasses, and rode into Montgomery aglow with 
color and excitement, and wet alike from perspiration, 
snow and rain. 

The whole excursion up from and back to Mont- 
gomery occupied five hours. The distance cannot be 
more than six miles to the top ; and the hight of the 
mountain, though never exactly measured, must ex- 
ceed fourteen thousand feet above the sea level. The 
wildest estimates are made by the local population of 
these higher peaks of Colorado; but unless it be 
Sopris Peak in the far West, it is not probable that 
any one of them rises as high as Mount Whitney in 
the Sierra Nevada of California, which is known to 
be above fifteen thousand feet. Gray, Lincoln, Pike's 
and Long's Peaks are the four great mountains of ex- 
plored Colorado ; they are all above fourteen thou- 
sand feet high, but probably no one goes higher than 
fourteen thousand five hundred. 

Montgomery, which lies close at the foot of Mount 
Lincoln, on the inside, and is about ten thousand feet 
high, is another of the deserted mining towns of | 

Colorado. There are a hundred or two houses stand- 
ing, but only one now occupied. Several years ago, 
the mines in the hill-sides were rich and remunerative, 
and a population of two or three thousand were 



THE EVERLASTING PLATTES. 149 

gathered there. There was an opera house, and 
saloons and stores by the dozens; but the more readily 
worked ore gave out, there were no means to reduce 
profitably what followed in the mines, and fresher dis- 
coveries elsewhere invited the people "to move on." 
"Buckskin Joe" is another similar town, ^yo miles off, 
under another spur of Mount Lincoln. There are 
good and rich mines at both places, and new ones are 
even still being discovered ; but, like most of the ores 
of Colorado, they await cheaper labor and simpler 
and more searching processes of treatment for their 
profitable use. 

The Platte Eiver divides, subdivides and redivides 
almost indefinitely ; and when we get up here amono- 
its head waters, the brain fairly grows confused with 
the number of its forks or branches. The same name 
extends to the remotest subdivision ; and we have the 
north branch of the south fork of the South Platte ; 
and the middle fork of the north branch of the south 
fork of the South Platte, and so on ad infinitum. I 
wish the Coloradians would abolish the sinuosities and 
multipHcations, and put the Plattes into numerals, as 
Platte 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and so on. I verily believe they 
would run up to the hundreds ; but that would be bet- 
ter than the " Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled 
peppers" nomenclature. Perhaps, though, they mean 
to make their geography take the place of classics as 
a discipline for the youthful mind ; if so, ihey have 
hit upon a very ingenious substitute, not to say im- 
provement. As between learning the Plattes and 
conjugating a Greek verb, where's ih^ choice for 
hardness ? All the time we were in the South Park, 



150 OUE NEW WEST. 

we were among Plattes, and getting to the heads of 
Plattes, and each was big enough and independent 
enough to go alone, and to deserve a name to itself. 
Fairplay lies on the Platte, and so did every one of 
our camping grounds for a week. 

I believe I have exhausted my adjectives and every 
known variety of picture fram.e in trying to set the 
South Park landscapes in the mind's eye of the reader. 
But their soft coloring, their rich variety of outline, 
their long sweep of distance, their grayish-green 
grasses, their deep-green evergreens, their silvery- 
green aspens, their summer pictures in their winter 
frames, — here August, there rising around always 
January, — only seeing can be feeling and believing. 
Especially beautiful and exhilarating to sense and 
spirit are the approaches to the mountains out from 
the central basin or prairie. First, over slight and 
soft-rolling hills, through wide valleys, around spurs 
of the mountains into new valleys, each succeeding 
one narrower, finally into canyons or chasms, and 
then up the abrupt hill-side ; flowers that had deserted 
the plains now beginning, then trees ceasing, and 
snow-banks appearing ; and finally catching the cold 
western wind as it sweeps over the crest of pass or 
hill. Occasionally, in the open prairie country, a 
ranch where some successor of David tends his flocks ; 
in the narrow valleys, or on the hill-sides, the deserted 
cabins of gold-hunters, who had passed on; every six 
or eight miles a new Platte to cross; and at each 
ascended mountain top the beginning of a new Platte 
running through tender grass out of a little round 
lake, or oozing from under a huge snow-bank. 



VIII. 

AN INDIAN "SCARE" AND THE INDIANS. 

Our Experiences with Indian Wars — A Terrible " Scare ** in the Moun- 
tains — A Night in Camp with Indian Expectations — The Indian 
Question Generally, Past, Present and Future — The Arkansas 
Valley — The Twin Lakes and their Beauties of Scenery and Life — 
Down the Valley and Across South Park again — A Grand Camp 
Scene — Who we Were and How we Lived — An Evening with 
Friendly Indians — The Last of our Camp Experiences — Out of the 
Park, Through the " Garden of the Gods," and Back to Denver — A 
Motley Procession Through the Town. 

We ran into the edge of an Indian war on both 
our journeys into the far West. The experience of 
an Indian scare,^ — that finish to all border life, — was 
granted to our party each year. Though we rode 
across the Plains in 1865, under apprehensions, we 
escaped interruption or delay ; but in continuing our 
stage journey over the Mountains to Salt Lake, at 
that time, the hostile redskins broke in on our track, 
stole the horses, killed their tenders, and obliged us 
to lie by, in dreary cabins, in the wilderness of the 
Bitter Creek desert country, till other horses and 
soldierly protection could be procured. Less real 
danger but greater alarm visited our excursion 
among the mountains of Colorado in 1868. Before, 



152 OUR NEW WEST. 

we were all men, and well armed ; now we had a 
large company of women and children, and were but 
poorly prepared for fighting. So we had a temporary 
share in the horrible excitement of the settlers, when 
the hostile Indians put on their war-paint, raise their 
war-whoop, and dash wildly upon the life and prop- 
erty of the whites. 

The day after our grand mountain experience on 
Lincoln, we pushed on west out of the South Park, 
over another range of mountains, and into the valley 
of the upper Arkansas Kiver. The South Park coun- 
try is free from rocks or stones; the waste of the 
mountains is broken and pulverized before it reaches 
the valleys; and even when we mount above grass 
and trees and earth, the "rock-ribbed hills" are simply 
great deposits of small stones, or, more correctly, 
broken rocks. This is one great element in the soft- 
ness of its scenery. But as we go over the moun- 
tains into the Arkansas Valley, there is a change ; the 
roads become rough with stones; boulders lie along 
the path or in the hill-sides, and the water-courses 
have thrust themselves through high walls of solid 
rock. There is more ruggedness and coarseness in 
nature; and while the want of it was not felt, now 
we welcome the new materials in the landscape. Our 
heavy baggage teams were slow in working up the 
huge hills and down, and we went into camp at the 
first passable widening of the side valley. 

But just as we were spreading blankets, and dis- 
playing tents, — weary with mountain travel, and our 
heaviest teams far behind, — there dashed in, on a 
gaunt white horse, a grim messenger from Denver, 



THE INDIANS AFTER US. 153 

with official advices to Governor Hunt that the In- 
dians of the Plains, — the Cheyennes, Arapahoes and 
Sioux, — were on the ^^war path;" that from seeming 
friends they had suddenly turned again to open foes ; 
and were raiding furiously all among the settlements, 
east, north and south of Denver, stealing horses and 
shooting the people. We were besought to keep 
among the mountains, — the home of the friendly 
Utes, — as the only place of safety, for our company 
of territorial and federal officials would be a tempting 
prize for the red men; but the messenger, who 
proved to be a villainous sensationist, — though of 
course we did not know this then, — added to his 
written reports the alarming story that he had met 
the hostile Indians in the mountains, only that very 
day, that they had pursued and shot at him, — the 
rascal even showing as proof the bullet-holes in his 
saddle, — that he barely escaped by rapid riding, and 
that they were probably but a few miles back, and 
on our path. 

Here was serious business, indeed, for such a party; 
burdened with overloaded wagons, tired horses and 
defenceless women and children; and all on pleasure 
and not on war intent. Messengers were sent back 
to hasten to camp all stragglers, and to warn the 
Indian agent, with his load of goods and rifles in 
the Park, to be on his guard, and to come forward. 
The secret could be kept from no one; the confusion 
and the excitement quickly grew intense; and that 
peculiar recklessness or indifference as to ordinary 
matters, that follows the presence of a deep emotion, 
was singularly manifest. Tents were shabbily put 
10 



154 OUR NEW WEST. 

up; camp was disorderly made; supper was eaten in 
that mechanical, forced way, without regard to quan- 
tity, quality or clean plates, that happens when death is 
in the house ; and elaborate toilets were dispensed with. 
But we huddled close in together; the animals were 
picketed near at hand; our fire-arms were put in 
good order; and up and down the road trusty sen- 
tinels were posted. On each side were high abrupt 
hills; it was a "lovely spot" for an ambuscade; but 
the nearest anybody came to being killed was when 
one of our sentinels, during the midnight blackness 
of storm, suddenly entered upon the ground of the 
other. Indian-shod in sandals, and moving with that 
noiseless, stealthy tread that hunters unconsciously 
adopt, the one was almost upon the other before the 
latter discovered a foreign presence. There was a 
sudden click of the rifle's cock, a peremptory demand 
for "personal explanation" without delay, and then, 
— a friendly instead of a deadly greeting. 

But it was a night to remember, with a shiver, — 
lying down in that far-off wilderness with the reason- 
able belief that before morning there was an even 
chance of an attack of hostile Indians upon our camp, 
more than half of whose numbers were women and 
children, — after an evening spent in discussing the 
tender ways Indians had with their captives, illustrated 
from the personal knowledge of many present; aroused 
after the first hour's feverish rest by a new messenger 
from another quarter, galloping into camp, and shout- 
ing, as if we were likely to forget, that " the Indians 
were loose, and hell was to pay;" followed by the 
coming of furious storm of rain and hail and thunder 



HOW TO DEAL WITH THE INDIANS. 155 

and lightning, sucking under our tents, beating througli 
them, to wet j^illows and blankets, — at any other time 
a dire grievance, now hardly an added trial; every 
ear stretched for unaccustomed sound, every heart 
beating anxiously, but every lip silent; all eagerly 
awaitino; the slow-coraino* mornino; to brino; renewal 
of life and the opportunity to go farther on and to 
safer retreats. 

The experience brought serious thought to us all 
of the whole Indian question, that puzzle to Congress 
and Eastern public opinion generally. And the fail- 
ure, which this unexpected outbreak carried to the 
last and most promising experiment with the so-called 
but miscalled " peace policy," has already led to a more 
intelligent study and understanding of the whole sub- 
ject by the country, and in the end will procure a 
resolute reformation of our past treatment of it. The 
truth here, as in many another dispute, lies between 
the two extremes of opinion and policy. The wild 
clamor of the border population for the indiscriminate 
extermination of the savages, as of wolves or other 
wild beasts and vermin, is as unintelligent and bar- 
barous, as the long dominant thought of the East 
against the use of force, and its incident policy of 
treating the Indians as of equal responsibility and 
intelligence with the whites, are unphilosophical 
and impracticable. The conflict between these two 
theories, with the varying supremacy of each, has 
brought us nothing but disaster and disgrace ; we 
have alternately treated these vagrant children of 
the wilderness as if we were worse barbarians than 
themselves or downright fools. It is time we re- 



156 OUB NEW WEST. 

spected ourselves and commanded their respect. Now 
we do neither. 

In the first place, the care of the Indians should 
be put into a single department at Washington. Its 
division between the War and Interior secretaries is 
the cause of half our woes. The war office, as repre- 
senting force, which is the first element in any suc- 
cessful dealing with ignorance and dependence, should 
monopolize their care. Then we should stop making 
treaties with tribes, cease putting them on a par with 
ourselves. We know they are not our equals; we 
know that our right to the soil, as a race capable of 
its superior improvement is above theirs ; and let us 
act openly and directly our faith. "The earth is the 
Lord's; it is given by Him to the Saints for its im- 
provement and development; and we are the Saints." 
This old Puritan premise and conclusion are the faith 
and practice of our people; let us hesitate no longer 
to avow it and act it to the Indian. Let us say to 
him, you are our ward, our child, the victim of our 
destiny, ours to displace, ours also to protect. We 
want your hunting-grounds to dig gold from, to raise 
grain on, and you must "move on." Here is a home 
for you, more limited than you have had ; hither you 
must go, here you must stay ; in place of your game, 
we will give you horses, cattle and sheep and grain; 
do what you can to multiply them and support your- 
selves; for the rest, it is our business to keep you from 
starving. You must not leave this home we have 
assigned you; the white man must not come hither; 
we will keep you in and him out; when the march of 
our empire demands this reservation of yours, we will 



THE TREATY-MAKING SWINDLE. 157 

assign you another; but so long as we choose, this is 
your home, your prison, your playground. 

Say and act all this as if we meant it, and mean it. 
If the tribes would go and submit peaceably, well 
and good; if they would not, use the force necessary 
to make them. Treat them just as a father would 
treat an ignorant, undeveloped child. If necessary 
to punish, punish; subject any way; and then use 
the kindness and consideration that are consistent 
with the circumstances. Use the best of these white 
men of the border, these Indian agents, many of 
whom are most capable and intelligent and useful 
men, to carry out and maintain this policy, so far as 
is possible; use the army so far as is necessary to 
enforce it, but withhold the soldiers whenever it is 
not, — for their presence on an Indian reservation is 
demoralizing to both parties, — but let all authority 
proceed from a single head, and that head represent 
a single force. 

Above all, stop the treaty -making humbug. It is 
the direct parent of all our Indian woes and theirs 
too. Neither party keeps the bargain. The Indian 
is cheated; the Senate changes the provisions; a 
quiddling Secretary of the Interior or Indian Com- 
missioner refuses to carry it out ; and from secretary 
down through contractors and agents, something is 
taken off the promise to the ear by each, till it is 
thoroughly broken to the hope of the poor savage. 
What the Indian wants is to be fed and clothed; the 
treaty and those who fulfill it on our part may or 
may not do this for him, oftenest not; he cannot tell 
what or how much he wants beforehand for these 



158 OUR NEW WEST. 

ends, and if he did, and bargained for it, the chances 
are ten to one that he fails to get it; or getting it, 
squanders it at once, and now, hungry and naked, he 
goes forth to seek relief by the simplest law of na- 
ture ; and hence his excuse and the excuse of his 
white sympathizers for war. 

But establish Force for Bargain ; Eesponsibility 
for Equality; Parentage for Antagonism; see that 
he is put apart and kept apart from the tide of 
settlement and civilization; that he has food and 
clothing, not in gross, but in detail; supplying him 
the means to help himself in the simplest forms pos- 
sible, — stock raising is practicable to all the tribes, 
and tilling the soil possible to most, — and furnishing 
the rest from day to day; add such education as he 
will take, such elevation as he will be awakened to, 
and then let him die, — as die he is doing and die he 
must, — under his changed life. 

This is the best and all we can do. His game flies 
before the white man ; we cannot restore it to him if 
we would ; we would not if we could ; it is his des- 
tiny to die ; we cannot continue to him his original, 
pure barbaric life ; he cannot mount to that of civil- 
ization; the mongrel marriage of the two, that he 
embraces and must submit to, is killing him, — and 
all we can do is to smooth and make decent the path- 
way to his grave. All this is possible ; and it need 
not cost so much as the mixed state of war and bar- 
gaining that we have heretofore pursued. In the 
beginning there must be the display and the use of 
power to unlearn in the Indians the false ideas our 
alternately cowardly bargaining and cowardly bully- 



THE ARKANSAS YALLET. 159 

ing policy towards them has engendered ; but once 
inaugurated, it will be simple and successful, — it will 
give us both peace and protection, and the Indians 
an easier path to the grave than lies before them 
now. More briefly and soldierly, General Sherman, 
now alive at last to the true nature of the question, 
expresses the new and necessary policy : " Peace and 
protection to the Indians upon the reservations ; war 
and extermination if found off from them." 

But to return to our own experiences. The scare 
wore off under the tonic of a cool, clear morning, with 
splendid visions of fresh fields of snow glancing in the 
sunlight, the arrival of our load of rifles and Indian 
goods safe, a good breakfast of trout and Governor 
Hunt's best griddle-cakes, and the following summons 
to horse for the Twin Lakes. Never party moved out 
of camp more gladly ; and a few miles farther on, the 
Arkansas Yalle}^ welcomed us into a new country, full 
of the light and the freshness and the joy of a newly 
awakened nature. There was a California roll to the 
hills that led down to the river ; the sage bush that 
covered them was greener and more stalwart than 
that of the Middle Park ; and the river bottom held a 
deeper toned grass, and was alive with grazing cattle; 
while the Sahwatch range of mountains, that divides 
the Arkansas Valley from the Pacific waters, was con- 
tinuously higher than any we had yet looked up to, 
and its bold majestic peaks bore and brought far down 
their middles that thin new snow, which is such a 
touching type of purity, and is never seen without a 
real enthusiasm. Governor Bross and Vice-President 
Colfax, who had been off spending the night among 



160 OUR NEW WEST. 

the miners of an upper gulch, greeted us, too, with 
felicitations on our safety, and with a company of vol- 
unteer cavalry, that did not desert us until all appre- 
hensions of danger had passed away. 

Crossing the river, descending the valley, and then 
turning up among the western hills, over one, two 
lines of them, racing and roystering along with our 
new companions, and in our new joys, we suddenly 
came out over the Twin Lakes, and stopped. The 
scene was, indeed, enchanting. At our feet, a half a 
mile away, was the lower of two as fine sheets of 
water as mountain ever shadowed, or wind rippled, 
or sun illuminated. They took their places at once 
in the goodly company of the Cumberland Lakes of 
England, of Lucerne in Switzerland, of Como and 
Laggiore in north Italy, of Tahoe and Donner in Cal- 
ifornia, and no second rank among them all. One is 
about three miles by a mile and a half; the other say 
two miles by one; and only a fifty-rod belt of grass 
and grove separates them. Above them on two sides 
sharply rise, — dark with trees and rocks until the 
snow caps with white, — the mountains of the range ; 
sparsely-wooded hills of grass and sage bush mount 
gracefully in successive benches on a third, — it was 
over these that we came into their presence; while 
to the south a narrow, broken valley, pushed rapidly 
by the mountains towards the Arkansas, carries their 
outlet stream to its home in the main river. Clear, 
hard, sandy beaches alternate with walls of rock and 
low marshy meadows in making the immediate sur- 
roundings of both lakes. The waters are purity it' 
self, and trout abound in them. 



THE TWIJ^ LAKES. 161 

Here we camped for that and the next day, which 
was Sunday; restored our Indian -broken nerves; 
caught trout and picked raspberries; bathed in the 
lakes; rode up and around them; looked into their 
waters, and on over them to the mountains, — first 
green, then blue, then black, finally white, and then 
higher to clouds, as changing in color under storm, 
under sun, under moon, under lightning. Every 
variety of scene, every change and combination of 
cloud and color were offered us in these two days; 
and we worshiped, as it were at the very fountains 
of beauty, where its every element in nature lay 
around, before and above us. 

Also, not to live forever in poetry, we patched our 
clothes, greased our boots, washed our handkerchiefs 
and towels, — one would dry while another was being 
washed, in the dry, breezy air, — and ate boiled onions 
and raspberry short-cake to repletion. Bayard Tay- 
lor's letters are at least a guide to the opportunities 
for good dinners in Colorado ; and ostensibly with the 
purpose to explore the lakes, and see the falls in the 
river above^ possibly with a thought to fall upon such 
hospitality as he experienced in the little neighboring 
village of Dalton, — another collection of vacant cabins, 
with a new court-house, and only two occupied tene- 
ments, — a few of us stole quietly ofif for a Sunday 
excursion. 

We circled the lakes, as beautiful in detail as in 
grand effect; picked out many a charming camping- 
ground for future visits ; found along the shores one 
or two resident families, and a tent with a stove-pipe 
through it, where a Chicago invalid was spending the 



162 OUR NEW WEST. 

summer, gaining vigorous strength and permanent 
health, and drying quantities of trout, — think of trout 
so jDlenty as to suggest drying them ! — followed up 
the bed of the stream two miles or more above the 
lakes to a very pretty waterflill, and a deep pool, 
worn out of solid rock, thick with visible trout, whom 
we could poke with long sticks, but could not se- 
duce with the fattest of grasshoppers; lunched off 
the mountain raspberry vines ; tracked a grizzly bear; 
and looked up the far-stretching gorge through rocks 
and bushes and vines that were very seducing, — ^but 
came back to Dalton in time to get our invitation to 
dinner. There was white table-cloth, and chairs, and 
fresh beefsteak, and mealy potatoes, and soft onions, 
and cream for coffee, and raspberry short-cake "to 
kill," and a lady and gentleman for hostess and host ; 
everything and more and better even than Taylor 
had two years before. Going back by the lakes to 
camp just at sunset, they were in their best estate of 
color, of light and shade ; and water and mountain 
and sky met and mingled, and led on the eye from 
one glory to another, till the joy of the spirit over- 
came and subdued and elevated the satisfaction of 
the senses. 

We had entered the Arkansas Yalley so far up that 
its head was visible. It leads to the lowest pass in all 
the mountains over to the Pacific slope, not rising 
above the timber line. Like all the passes of the 
range, it is ambitious of a railroad, and certainly seems 
more reasonably so than many others. But for many 
years to come our continental railroads will find lower 
and smoother paths both north and south of Colorado. 



DOWN THE AKKANSAS YALLEY. 163 

The plan of our journey had been to go from the 
Twin Lakes down the Arkansas, around the outside of 
South Park, so nearly as the rock-bound banks of the 
river would allow, through Canyon City and Colorado 
City, and up by the Plains, under the eastern line of 
the mountains, to Denver. Thus we should have 
circuited all the great central portions of the State, 
and except San Luis Park, which we should have left 
in the south, have seen all the principal centers of her 
population, all the distinguishing features of her 
geography and her natural beauty. But this would 
have taken us directly into the path of the now ram- 
pantly hostile Indians; so we drew in our lines, and 
made a narrower circle across the South Park, and up 
to Denver. We lost little or nothing that was dis- 
tinctive, though some repetitions and modifications of 
beautiful scenery already or to be made familiar to us. 
But I urge all who come after us to follow our intended 
route, and even to extend their trip over into San 
Luis Park. Here, though the testimony is contra- 
dictory, will be found a country rich in beauty and 
resources, and with some features not characteristic 
of the other great Parks. 

First we rode some twelve miles down the valley. 
With a mounted escort of about twenty gallant young 
gold miners, and the addition of two or three camping 
parties that sought our company home as a sedative 
to the nervousness of the Indian stories, we made up 
a grand "outfit." All together, there were from 
seventy-five to one hundred persons, and as many 
animals, as it moved back over the mountains into 
South Park again. The first eight miles were through 



164 OUR NEW WEST. 

a broken, hilly country, the mountains coming down 
to the river on each side in great gashes or rolls, 
occasionally a broad inclined plain, frequently a dry 
ravine. The soil was light and cold, and sage bush 
and coarse grass and thin forests were its products, 
other than gold. Of the latter it holds in deposit 
a plentiful sprinkling almost everywhere ; and we 
passed the prosperous mining villages of Granite and 
Cash Creek, their peoples tearing up the ground all 
about in eager search for the precious metal. 

Little canyons and big canyons drove our road 
away from the river and over hills and bluffs for 
much of these eight miles ; but at the end we came 
down into a wider and richer opening, and there 
spread before us a fine agricultural section, the garden 
of the upper Arkansas. For thirty-five miles now, 
the river, hugging the hills on the east, lays open a 
broad, clean, rising plain of from one to ten miles in. 
width, before the rocks and forests of the western 
mountains begin. Beyond these thirty-five miles, 
the river canyons again for a long course, and farm- 
ing is at an end, and travel down the valley is turned 
off into South Park till the stream emerges again 
from its rock embraces. Tributaries of the main 
stream slash and fertilize this great meadow ; and it 
bears large crops of grain, grass and roots. Some 
twenty farmers have brought under profitable culti- 
vation about seven hundred acres of this valley ; the 
mines in the valleys above and over in South Park 
furnish the markets ; a Frenchman, one of the first 
of these ranchmen, and whose bread and milk we 
devoured as we went by, returned an income of from 



A PAETIXG GLANCE OF THE ARKANSAS. 165 

twelve to fifteen thousand dollars in 1866, as the 
results of a single season's farming, crops being good 
and prices high; and, spite of grasshoppers and 
drouth, the business is uniformly more successful than 
mining 

Crossing the river through the hospitable French- 
man's grounds, we turned up the hills, and began to 
leave this inviting country almost as soon as we had 
entered it. It beckoned us back by scenes of ex- 
quisite beauty, clothed in warm sunshine, and at 
every convenient spot in the ascending hills, we lin- 
gered for longing looks, up and down, and across its 
lines. All around on the lower hills, down to the 
river, guarding its passage, were magnificent ruins of 
mountains ; huge boulders ; fantastic shaped columns ; 
lines of palisades; the kernels which water could not 
wash nor abrasion wear away; groves of rocks; fort- 
resses upon the river shore, — the Rhine is not more 
thickly peopled with ruined castles; with pines and 
aspens and coarse bushes growing upon and among 
them all, including a new species, called pinyoUy a 
stunted, sprawling, thick-growing pine, looking, as set 
in a grove a little way off, like an old apple orchard. 
Starting from the opposite bank, the open, rising 
meadow, a great inclined plane of gray and green, 
stretching miles away up the sides of the grand 
Sahwatch Mountains, w^hose tops formed a line of 
snow-fields that overlooked and cooled the whole 
warm scene of sunshine and life below. Up and 
down hills we toiled all the afternoon, refreshed only 
and yet tantalized by occasional glimpses of the beau- 
tiful valley behind, which seemed to spread out all 



166 OUR NEW WEST. 

its beauty of form, of scene, of color, to harrow us 
for so early deserting it. 

The only other sensation of the afternoon's ride 
was the sudden dashing into our line from behind of 
a dozen or twenty Ute chiefs and warriors. As we 
had not learned to know one kind of Indians from 
another, their galloping in among us stirred the blood 
a trifle ; but we soon found they were friends, and, 
pairing off among our mounted men, they were grunt- 
ing and gesticulating their story into all our ears. 
They proved to be the leaders of a band of Utes liv- 
ing down in the San Luis Park country, who had 
learned, in the mysterious and speedy manner of sav- 
ages and wildernesses, of the uprising of the hostile 
Indians of the Plains, and of the presence of Gov- 
ernor Hunt and our party in this region, and so, trav- 
eling day and night, they had hurried up to meet us, 
and see if they were wanted, either to protect us or 
take the field against their and our enemies. Not with- 
out selfish thought, too, perhaps, for blankets and beef 
They camped with us that night, were well fed and 
well promised, and went back home the next day. 
The Governor had neither authority nor means to 
put them into the field against the Plain Indians; 
nor was it clear that there was any occasion for it. 

"We pushed up near to the tops of the mountains, 
riding far into the evening, before camping, and 
finally pitched our tents in a great meadow, heavy 
with grass, and interspersed with little wooded knolls, 
within and around one of which we built our fires and 
laid our blankets for the night. We needed them 
all, for it was drearily cold before morning, and water 



SALT SPRINGS AND MOEE INDIANS. 167 

froze in our cups on the way from the brook, half a 
mile off! But the forenoon's sun and saddle brought 
summer warmth back; and we were not long in get- 
ting over the range and down into South Park again. 
We entered it about at the middle, and it seemed 
tamer and less green than in the upper sections. Al- 
kali and salt deposits whitened the surface in great 
patches, and so rich are 'the springs with salt at one 
spot, that a large establishment for evaporating the 
water and making salt is in operation, and holds a 
profitable monopoly of the salt market of the State. 
We made a fine noon camp by one of the everlasting 
Platte s, and trout-catching was brisk for an hour. 

Here, too, we had another Indian raid, — the out- 
posts of our old Middle Park Utes, who had heard the 
story of the Plain Indians coming up into the South 
Park, and moved over in a body to dispossess them, 
came wildly and joyfully riding in upon us, a dozen 
of two, with some white friends from Fairplay. So 
our escort doubled, and we traveled across the Park 
with as large and as motley a retinue as ever Oriental 
prince moved among over the deserts of Asia. Only, 
with true American individuality, we scattered wildly 
about, and lingered or hurried at pleasure over the 
wide open plains, dotted with occasional hill and lake, 
the latter repeated by mirage in the distance, or by 
the deceptive resemblance of an alkali field, and cir- 
cled by the far-distant, far-reaching mountains. Every- 
thing else failing or fatiguing, from sheer abundance, 
— mountain, field, grass, forest, color, — the atmosphere 
remained, a feeling of beauty that ministered to sev- 
eral senses without ever palling the appetite of either. 



168 OUR NEW WEST. 

We made grand camp that niglit about a mile 
beyond Fairplay, on a gently sloping plateau^ backed 
by a thick aspen grove, watered at its base by a fresh 
stream, fronted by the broad Park meadows, looking 
towards sundown, and taking the best light of the full 
moon through its nightly circle of the horizon. The 
dozen or twenty Utes enlisted to go through with us 
to Denver, and made a camp for themselves a few rods 
away among the trees. The mounted men were 
usually the first in camp ; they stripped their animals 
of saddles and bridles and blankets, and sent them 
galloping off for grass and water. As fast as the 
wagons came up, they took their places in the grand 
circle of the camp-ground, and were unloaded of tents, 
baggage and provisions, and their horses loosened to 
join the others. Smooth spots were chosen for the 
tent^ in a semicircle, and the tents put up by the 
most adroit in that business. There was one for 
Governor Hunt and his family ; another for Mr. Witter 
and his, consisting of himself, his wife (Mr. Colfax's 
sister), a babe eight weeks old, — think of that, you 
tender mothers in four-walled and close-roofed houses 
in civilization ! — and Mr Colfax's mother and father ; 
a third for the young ladies ; Governor Bross and the 
Yice-President used one of the large covered wagons 
for lodgings ; my friend and myself had a little tent 
by ourselves; and the rest, despising such paltry 
interventions of effeminacy, lay around in the softest, 
shadiest places, under the wagons, under trees, always 
near the fires. The little sheet-iron cooking-stoves, 
one for each of the two messes into which our original 
party was divided, were simultaneously planted and 



COOKING SUPPER IN CAMP. 169 

fired up. The open fires were located, and the Vice- 
President, Governor Bross, Mr. Thomas of "The Rocky 
Mountain News/' and any other idle and otherwise 
incompetent persons, were detailed to fetch wood for 
them. Soon a huge fire blazed in front of each tent. 
Then the wood-haulers became water-carriers. Next 
the fastidious made their toilets ; and Governor Hunt 
called for assistant cooks. 

This night we were to have an extra meal. To 
start with, and especially to provide quantity for 
the capacious Indian stomachs, a herd of cattle were 
driven up from the meadow, and Mr. Curtis, the 
Indian interpreter, passing them in review, rifle in 
hand, and, choosing a fat young cow, sent a ball un- 
erringly into her forehead, and she fell dead in- 
stantly. It was the first time I had ever seen this 
speedy, humane manner of butchering; and Mr. 
Bergh, the anti-cruelty man, ought to demand its 
universal use. The animal was soon cut up, and a 
few choice pieces brought to our camp, but the In- 
dians carried off the bulk to theirs, and, with forked 
sticks and open fire, and a little salt, were soon filling 
up their waste places. The village furnished us cream 
and fresh supplies of sugar. Soon we had beef- 
steak frying, mush and milk in proper progress, oys- 
ters and tomatoes stewing, hominy warming, a huge 
section of ribs of beef roasting on a forked stick 
before the fire, coffee and tea brewing, biscuits bak- 
ing at one mess, and slapjacks browning at another. 
Governor Bross earned his supper by grinding coffee 
for half an hour, and afterwards, his hand having 
grown supple, you could have seen him, seated on 
11 



170 OUR NET^ WEST. 

an empty whisky-keg, turning the griddle-cakes to 
perfection ; and the writer won his glory and victual 
by making the " long-sweetening," i, e. white sugar 
melted into a permanent syrup. Then there were 
canned peaches and raspberries for dessert. All this, 
seated on our haunches on the ground, or on bended 
knees around the board and box that served for 
tables, each with a tin plate and cup, and knife and 
fork and spoon to match, and all with appetites 
worthy the food. We generally " boarded around," 
that is, ate at the mess which happened to have the 
most inviting meal, and as there is no knowledge 
so satisfactory as the experimental on such a subject, 
it commonly resulted in our eating at both. It is 
surprising how excellent food can be had in such a 
camping expedition with a little painstaking and tact 
in providing and cooking. Governor Hunt was mas- 
ter of all the arts of camp-life, and under his care we 
" fared sumptuously every day." The slapjacks and 
their "long-sweetening" were an incomparable dish, 
and took the place of bread at Governor Hunt's 
table. 

Supper over, and the dishes washed, in which last 
operation "equal rights" were sometimes allowed the 
women, all gathered around the central camp-fires, 
with shawls, buffalo robes and blankets for protection 
from the ground; our friends traveling in company, 
who had made separate camps adjoining, came over 
to spend the evening ; to-night our escort party from 
the Arkansas Valley had supped with us, and were 
about to say farewell; and their Indian successors, 
having become happy and hilarious, were invited 



GALA NIGHT IN CAMP — THE INDIANS SING. 171 

and welcomed into the circle ; and thus re-enforced 
and diversified, we made a gala night of it. It was 
a very curious scene indeed. The blaze of the camp- 
fire contrasted sharply with the light of the moon, 
and brought out in fine relief all the hundred va- 
rying faces and strange costumes gathered around. 
Speeches were made and songs sung ; Mr. Colfax ad- 
dressed the Utes, and his words were interpreted to 
them by Mr. Curtis, and the reply of their chief to 
us ; and then we called for songs from them. Stimu- 
lated by a pile of white sugar that Governor Hunt 
threw down at their feet, they got up and responded 
with spirit. Standing in a row, shoulders touching, 
and swaying to and fro in a long line by one motion, 
they chanted in a low, guttural way, all on one key, 
and only musical as it was correct monotone. Then 
there were more songs and sentiments from the 
whites ; the Indians were dismissed ; our kind friends 
from the Arkansas said good-by; and soon the fires 
of camp were dull, and all its life still in sleep, — a 
sleep of trust and safety, there under the open sky, 
with a village of all sorts of people a mile away, and 
a band of savages within six rods. It was all so in- 
congruous and anomalous to our home thought and 
life ; and yet we felt as safe, and were as safe, as in 
double-bolted houses on police-patrolled streets. Only 
the contrasts forced themselves into the wakeful 
moments of night and morning, as we turned over 
and refastened the blankets, and piled more baggage 
over chilly feet, and peered out into the dead stillness 
of the camp, broken may-be by the dull snoring of a 
heavy sleeper, and the far-off browsing of a greedy 



172 OUR NEW WEST. 

mule; sounds brought near and made loud by the 
hush of human life, and the reign of nature's peace. 

Out of the Park and into the hills that separate it 
from the Plains the next day. The way was familiar, 
the road for the most part good. We scattered along, 
two or three together, through five or six miles ; clos- 
ing up for lunch, and again for night camp. Our In- 
dian escort, familiar with every rod of the country, 
roamed at will, taking short cuts over the hills, and 
appearing first in the rear, then far in advance. We 
had a beautiful camp, after twenty-five miles ride, in 
a narrow but long little valley, that bowed the sun 
out at one end, a?? it welcomed the moon up at the 
other. The next day, too, all among the hills, rid- 
ing another twenty-five miles; the roads improving; 
ranches thickening, — no lack now of buttermilk or 
cream; travelers grew numerous; daily newspapers 
coming in; and the end dawning. It was a pleasant 
mountain country, open, free, lightly wooded, abun- 
dantly watered, and the valleys rich for grass and 
grain. The streams, too, hold trout, and the hills are 
thick with raspberries, — it is up here that the Den- 
verites come for their briefer mountain excursions, 
and this is the common road for commerce and for 
pleasure into the South Park. 

Our night camp now was the last of the excursion. 
It was near the junction of the roads leading to Den- 
ver by the Plains and to Idaho through the moun- 
tains. There was a rivalry among the cooking-stoves 
for the best farewell supper; but the slapjacks gave 
Governor Hunt the victory, — there was no equalling, 
no resisting them. Around the camp-fire, we " talked 



OUT OF THE MOUNTAINS. 173 

it over;" hilarious with a vein of sadness; humorous 
with a touch of pathos ; Mr. Colfax made his excel- 
lent speech, beginning, "this is the sadde.«t moment 
of my life;" we sang auld-lang-syne, and prepared for 
an early start in the morning. 

The breakfast dishes were packed dirty, — " after us 
the Deluge," — and camp was broken by eight o'clock 
with the cry, " Ho, for Denver." The going out of the 
mountains was very fine. The several miles through 
Turkey Creek Canyon, the road winding along with 
the stream at the bottom of a high gorge of rocks, 
were fresh and exhilarating; we had gone around 
canyons before, painfully and laboriously ; now to 
follow one by a narrow but firm road ojQfered new and 
picturesque views. This was not unlike the Via Mala 
of Switzerland ; and coming out, the road circled a 
high precipitous hill midway in its side, an expensive 
and excellent bit of road-making, such as is rarely 
seen anywhere in America. 

Here we overlooked the grand ocean of the Plains, 
and came upon the struggles of nature to leave off 
mountain and begin plain. Along here, as at other 
points below, there seems to have been an especial 
and antagonistic fold thrown up almost abruptly from 
the level plain. Pike's Peak, which is distinct from 
the main range, is the chief endeavor or culmination 
of this throe of the formation. And around it, as 
here, are grouped monuments or remains of moun- 
tains, alike grotesque, commanding, impressive; tak- 
ing all shapes, and giving the thought that a Power 
greater and higher than man's had made here fa- 
miUar home. The collection of these ruins near 



174 OUR NEW WEST. 

Pike's Peak and Colorado City, which we missed see- 
ing because of the Indian war, is called " The Garden 
of the Gods," and the name not unfitly clothes the 
impression they make. They are not boulders or 
piles of rock, but what is left of mountains washed 
and worn away by waters and winds. The body is 
a fine reddish granite ; and they stand sentinelled 
about upon the bare closing bluffs of the hills, with 
forms of such majesty and such personality, as arouse 
one's wonder and deepen curiosity into awe. 

Down into the last ravine, and out upon the long 
rolls of the Plains. The Platte and its branches wind 
about in the far distance, with their gardens of grain 
and their groves of trees, making a pleasantly varie- 
gated map of green of the vast picture. Bear Creek 
especially offers a charming principality of its own. 
And far in the thin haze the steeples and blocks of 
Denver stand upon the sky. Herds of grazing cattle 
are scattered along on both sides of the road; and 
with a common hunger for home and civilization, 
beasts and drivers spur each other into rapid gait. 
Our day's ride of twenty-five miles is finished by two 
o'clock, and we stop before entering the town to "serry 
the ranks," and try the unaccustomed draughts of a 
suburban brewery. 

A circus would have been a poor show compared 
to the procession that then passed into Denver. First 
were the faithful Utes, gay with bright blankets and 
yellow and red paint; a bride among them, beaded 
and bespangled from head to foot; then our own 
cavaliers and cavalieresses, their plumage not over 
gay after a fortnight's mountain use, their animals 



RE-ENTKEE TO DENVER. 175 

worn and sorry from hard riding and no oats; next 
carriages, ambulances and baggage-wagons, out of 
which peered flapping sun-bonnets and browned faces, 
with every other wheel bound in huge sticks from the 
forest to keep them from dropping to pieces; and 
finally Governor Evans's carriage, altogether minus 
two wheels, and just lifted from the ground by two 
poles that dragged their slow length along behind. 
Despite the solemnity of the town over the Indian 
raids; despite the dignity of demeanor due to high 
officials, — Ute chiefs, Colorado chiefs, Illinois chiefS;, 
Washington fathers, — the street broke into a horse, 
nay a mule laugh, that rolled along from block to 
block, and turned the back doors out in affi'ight lest 
Cherry Creek had come to town again. And then 
we were dismissed to assure our friends of our iden- 
tity, and reconstruct ourselves. 



IX. 

THE MINES AND THE FAEMS OF COLORADO. 

The Beginning, Growth and Present Condition of the Mining Interests 
of Colorado — 1859 to 1869 — Central City and its Operations — 
Georgetown and its Silver Mines — Gulch Mining and its Revival — 
The Certain Future Growth of the Mining Wealth of the State — 
The Greater Agriculture Wealth of Colorado — Its Rapid Develop- 
ment — Fertile Valleys and Astonishing Crops — Cost of Living — 
Stock Raising — Coal and Iron and Manufactures — Professor Agassiz 
and the Glaciers — The Population of Colorado and its Character- 
istics — When to Visit its Mountains and Parks — The Resort of 
Pleasure Seekers and Health Hunters. 

It remains for us^ before going over into the Great 
Basin of the Continent, to consider the industrial 
interests, growth, prosperity and promise of Color- 
ado. These have only been incidentally alluded to 
so far; but they deserve special exhibition. The 
discovery of gold among the sands of the mountain 
valleys in 1859 was the beginning of the present 
State. Thousands flocked across the Plains in that 
year in eager scramble for the fabled wealth. For- 
tune ebbed and flowed with them as in all mining 
ventures ; the few won, many struggled and suflered 
for a bare subsistence, nearly as many more lost all 
they brought with them, even their hopes, and went 



THE MARCH OF CIVILIZATION. 




Ax Indian Encampment and a Miner's Cabin. 



THE TRIAL TIMES OF COLORADO. 179 

back despondent, or went on over the mountains to 
California or Idaho, desperate. The war sent out a 
new class of emigrants, neutrals or cowards, willing 
to run any risks but those of fighting either for their 
section or their nation. The dirt-washers swept eagerly 
over the rich surface deposits, moving like grazing 
herds from spot to spot for fresher fields -, and quartz 
mining came in to renew the fading hopes, and fix 
both capital and labor. 

When we first visited the country, in 1865, the 
original era of speculation, of waste, of careless and 
unintelligent work, and as little of it as possible, of 
living by wit instead of labor, of reliance upon east- 
ern capital instead of home industry, was, if not at 
its hight, still reigning, but with signs of decay and 
threatening despair. In the next two years, 1866 
and 1867, affairs became desperate; the population 
shrunk ; mines were abandoned ; mills stopped ; east- 
ern capital, tired of waiting for promised returns, 
dried up its fountains ; and the secrets of the rich 
ores seemed unfathomable. Kesidents, who could not 
get away, were put to their trumps for a living ; and 
economy and work were enforced upon all. Thus 
weeded out, thus stimulated, the population fell back 
on the certainties; such mining as was obviously 
remunerative was continued ; the doubtful and losing 
abandoned ; the old and simple dirt washing for gold 
was resumed, and followed with more care ; and farm- 
ing rose in respectability and promise. The discovery 
and opening of specially rich silver mines near 
Georgetown kept hope and courage alive, and fresh- 
ened speculation in a new quarter; but the main fact 



180 OUR NEW WEST. 

of the new era was that the people went to work, 
became self-reliant, and, believing that they "had a 
good thing" out here, undertook to prove it to the 
world by intelligent and economic industry. 

These were the kernel years of Colorado; they 
proved her ; they have made her. Her gold product 
went down, probably, to say a million dollars, in each 
of 1866 and 1867; but it began at once, under the 
new order of things, to rise ; and agriculture also at 
once shot up and ahead, and directly assumed, as it 
has in California, the place of the first interest, the 
great wealth. No more flour, no more corn, no more 
potatoes at six cents to twelve cents a pound freight, 
from the Missouri River; in one year Colorado be- 
came self-supporting in food; in the second an ex- 
porter, the feeder of Montana, the contractor for the 
government posts and the Pacific Railroad; and now, 
in the third year, (1868,) with food cheaper than in 
" the States," she forces the Mississippi and Missouri 
Valleys to keep their produce at home or send it East. 
She feeds the whole line of the Pacific Railroad this 
side the continental divide, and has even been send- 
ing some of her vegetables to Omaha. Her gold and 
silver product ran up to at least two millions in 1868, 
got out at a profit of from twenty-five to fifty per 
cent., and is certainly to be at least three millions in 
1869. Her agricultural products were near twice as 
much, certainly three millions for 1868, and perhaps 
four millions ; though it is difficult to make as certain 
estimates in this particular, and the Indians worked 
great mischief with the ingathering of the crops the 
past fall. 



THE QUARTZ-MIN-ING AT CENTRAL CITY. 181 

Central City, in the midst of the mountains on 
the north branch of Clear Creek, continues to be 
the center of the gold quartz-mining- and business 
there was never more healthily prosperous than now, 
though the population is not so large (in 1868-9) 
as in 1864-5. But all its stamp mills were in opera- 
tion in the fall of 1868, and more were being erected ; 
for after wearily waiting through two or three years 
for more effective processes for reducing the ores, 
their owners have set these in operation again, sim- 
plified, perfected and economized their working, and, 
from about forty mills and seven hundred and fifty 
stamps, were then producing near fifty thousand dol- 
lars of gold a week, at a cost for both mining and 
milling of from two-thirds to three-quarters that sum. 
This season is expected to see say fifty mills and one 
thousand stamps at work in that valley. The most 
valuable ores of the neighboring mines are not put 
through this process, but are sold at about one hundred 
dollars a ton to Professor Hill's smelting or Swansea 
works, now established there, and working the richer 
and sulphuretted ores with an economy and com- 
pleteness that the plain stamp mills cannot do. The 
ores worked in the latter form the principal product 
of the mines, and produce under the stamps about 
twenty-five dollars a ton, while the cost for mining 
and milling is about fifteen dollars. If steam is used 
the cost goes up to twenty dollars. The Swansea 
and the plain stamp mill are the only " processes " 
now in use in the valley. Professor Hill has proved 
the success and profit of the former, at least for all 
high-class ores. He was giving from eighty to one 



182 OUR NEW WEST. 

hundred and twenty-five dollars a ton for such ore 
(in 1868), and probably made from thirty to forty 
dollars a ton on it ; and his purchases amounted to 
some twenty thousand dollars a month. He was 
already doubling his furnaces. But the problem is 
to apply his process profitably to lower class ores; 
to such as hold from twenty-five to fifty dollars a 
ton, of which there are almost literally mountains 
in Colorado. The free or simple gold ores of this 
grade can be worked well enough by stamps and 
amalgamation, as in Central City and California, and 
the cost thereof can be ultimately reduced to prob- 
ably one-half of present prices ; but these constitute 
only a fraction of the rich ores of Colorado. Most of 
them hold both silver and gold, combined with sul- 
phurets of iron, and a process which gets one leaves 
the other, except, of course, smelting, which at pres- 
ent is too expensive for any but highly-freighted ores. 
This is why thousands of mines are unworked to-day; 
why scores of mills with unperfected processes, or 
plain stamps, stand idle, rotting and rusting in all 
parts of the State ; and why deserted cabins and 
vacant villages lie scattered in all the valleys about, 
— telling their tragic tales of loss and disappointment, 
monuments of the enthusiasm and the credulity of 
miner and capitalist, who laborexi and invested wildly 
and before their time. 

The villages of the Central City region lie most 
uncomfortably squeezed into little narrow ravines, 
and stuck into the hill-sides, on streets the narrowest 
and most tortuous that I ever saw in America ; some 
houses held up in dizzy hights on stilts, others bur- 



GEOKGETOWN AND ITS SILVER MINES. 183 

rowed into the stones of the hill, with a gold "lode" 
in the back yard, and often a well issuing from a rock 
of precious metals. But here they have struggled 
into a hopeful permanency, with four to five thousand 
inhabitants, thriving, orderly, peaceable, busy, sup- 
porting two daily papers, with churches and schools, 
and all the best materials of government and society 
that the East can boast of Down in the close val- 
leys, and up the steep hill-sides to the very top, rise 
the mills for grinding out the gold, or the shanties 
that cover the shafts that lead down after the ore. 
Farther away, on the mountains, thick as ant-hills or 
prairie-dog-holes, and looking the same, are "lodes" 
or leads of mineral, discovered, dug into, pre-empted, 
but not worked, — hundreds, thousands of them, with 
fortunes or failures involved in their development, 
ready to be tried when the discoverer gets time or 
money, or turned over to a Wall street stock company 
of ^Ye millions capital. 

Some silver mine discoveries have recently been 
made in the Central City region ; indeed, there is sil- 
ver in all the gold ores, and gold in all the silver ores 
of the State, and lead and copper in most besides; 
but the head-quarters of the silver business is at 
Georgetown, ten or a dozen miles over the mountains 
from Central City, at the head of the south branch of 
Clear Creek. Around and above this now thriving 
and most beautifully located of the principal mining 
villages of Colorado; at nine thousand, ten thousand, 
on even to twelve and thirteen thousand feet above 
the sea level, almost unapproachable save in summer, 
and then only by pack mules or on foot, are many 



184 OUR NEW WEST. 

marvelously rich silver veins in the rocks. Hundreds 
of mines have been opened- but only a dozen or 
twenty are now being actually worked with profitable 
results. The rest await purchasers from their " pros- 
pectors," or capital to develop them. The ore from 
the leading mines ranges in value from one hundred 
to one thousand dollars a ton. Only two mills for 
reducing the ore were in operation in 1868; one 
treated the second class ore, such as will average say 
two hundred dollars a ton, reducing it by crushing or 
stamping, then washing with salt to oxidize it, and 
then amalgamating with quicksilver, at a cost of from 
fifty to one hundred dollars a ton; and the other 
smelting the higher priced ores, at a cost probably of 
one hundred to two hundred dollars a ton. The lat- 
ter establishment buys outright most of the ore it 
reduces, and has paid all the way from five hundred 
to six hundred and seventy-five dollars a ton for it. 
Both processes get out from seventy-five to ninety 
per cent, of the assay value of the ore ; but they are 
imperfect and expensive, and much of the best ore 
is now sent East for treatment. The Equator mine, 
owned by a party of railroad men from Chicago, is 
one of the two or three prizes there, and sends its 
first-class ore, worth from nine hundred to one thou- 
sand dollars a ton, all the way to Newark, N. J., to be 
reduced. Thirty tons, sent East in September, 1868, 
realized over twenty-two thousand dollars in silver. 
Georgetown now has a population of about three 
thousand, and the best hotel in the State. It is one 
of the places that every tourist should visit, partly 
for its silver mines, partly because the road to it up 



THE CAUSES OF MINING FAILUEES. 185 

the South Clear Creek is through one of the most 
interesting sections of the mountains, and partly that 
it is the starting-point for the ascension of Gray's 
Peaks. The traveler can go up to the top of that 
mountain and back to Georgetown between break- 
fast and supper -, and if he will not take his tour by 
the Snake and Blue Kivers to the Middle or South 
Park, he should certainly make this day's excursion 
from Georgetown. 

Scattered about, in Boulder District, on the Snake, 
over on the upper Arkansas, up among the gulches 
of the South Park hills, are a few more quartz mills, 
some in operation, more not ; but the principal busi- 
ness of quartz mining is done in the sections I have 
named, in Gilpin and Clear Creek Counties. Mill 
City, Empire, and Idaho are villages in this section, 
with their mines and mills, doing a little something, 
struggling to prove their capacity, but hardly in a 
single case making money, partly because of the 
poverty of the ore, but chiefly because it is refractory, 
and will not yield up its possessions to any known 
and reasonably cheap process. Time, patience, and 
cheaper labor will bring good results out of many of 
these investments ; but others will have to go to swell 
the great number of failures that stand confessed all 
over this as all over every other mining country. 

There are great tunneling schemes proposed or 
started in the Georgetown silver district, by w^hich 
the various ore veins of a single mountain are to be 
cut deep down in their depths, and their wealth 
brought out of a single mouth in the valley, at a much 
cheaper rate than by digging down from the top on 



186 OUR NEW WEST. 

the vein's course and hauling up. The "Burleigh 
drill" from Massachusetts, that has been in use in the 
Hoosac tunnel, has been introduced there for this 
purpose ; and successful mining on a grand scale will 
soon take this form, not only there, but in Nevada, 
and indeed in most of our mining States. 

The other form of mining, known as gulch-mining 
or dirt-washing, is increasing again, and employed full 
three hundred men during the season of 1868. Fifty 
to seventy-five of these were at work in the Clear 
Creek and Boulder Valleys; but the great body of 
them were scattered through Park, Lake and Sum- 
mit Counties, on the Snake and other tributaries of 
the Blue Kiver ; on the upper Plattes in South Park; 
and on the upper Arkansas and its side valleys. They 
averaged twelve dollars a day to a man the last 
year ; but the season for this kind of mining is less 
than half the year, in some places because of ice 
and snow; in most for lack of water. The year's 
product from gulch-mining certainly footed up half 
a million dollars, probably a hundred thousand more. 
New gulches and fresh "bars," or deposits of sand, 
brought down from the hills by the streams, were 
opened last year in preparation for another season's 
work; and it is not unreasonable to look for a 
million of dollars from gulch-mining in 1869. 

These figures seem small compared with the amounts 
reported to be got out in the years following the first 
gold discoveries in 1859, — in '60 to '64, — when one 
year's production ran up as high as six or eight 
millions, and for several years averaged probably 
four ; when hundreds, if not thousands, of eager miners 



THE GULCH-MINING AND ITS DITCHES. 187 

were gathered in a single gulch^ and ran over its 
sands with a reckless waste, taking off the cream of 
the deposits, and then moving on to new places, and, 
finally exhausting both their own first enthusiasm, 
and all the best or most obvious chances, turning 
away in disgust at a " played out" territory. But the 
business is now resumed in a more systematic, intelli- 
gent and economical way ; labor is cheaper ; miners 
are satisfied with more moderate returns ; and there 
is really almost no limit to these valleys and banks, 
under the hills and along the rivers, whose sands and 
gravel hold specks of gold in sufiicient quantity to pay 
for washing over. An intelligent investigator of the 
subject tells me that the whole of South Park would 
pay three to four dollars a day for the labor of wash- 
ing it over. But I pray it may not be done while I 
live to come to these Mountains and the Parks ; for 
gold-washing leaves a terrible waste in its track. 

In the valley of the Blue and its tributaries, more 
extensive works for gulch-mining exist than in any 
other district ; there, not less than eighty-four miles 
of ditches to bring water to wash out the gold with 
have been constructed, and the amount of water they 
carry in the aggregate is eight thousand seven hun- 
dred and fifty inches. One of these ditches is eleven 
miles long; two others seven miles each; another 
five, and so on ; and they cost from one thousand to 
twelve hundred dollars a mile. Says Mr. Thomas of 
"The Kocky Mountain News," from whose careful 
and elaborate investigations last summer and fall, I 
draw many of the facts of this chapter : — " The facili- 
ties and opportunities for gulch-mining in this county 
12 



188 OUR NEW WEST. 

(Summit) are equal if not superior to any in Color- 
ado. Many of the gulches now worked will last for 
years to come, while much ground remains yet un- 
touched. The Blue River will pay for ten miles or 
more, at the rate of five to ten dollars per day to the 
man. Many places will pay from three to five dollars 
per day to the man, and will be worked when labor 
becomes lower and living cheaper." 

In the Granite district of the upper Arkansas, 
quartz gold is found in simple combinations, or 
"free," as in California, which can be mined and 
reduced for eight to ten dollars a ton, while it yields 
from fifteen to one hundred dollars; but these are 
ores from near the surface, and it is yet a problem 
whether they will not change on getting down in the 
veins, as in other Colorado mines, and become "re- 
fractory," and impossible of working at a profit by 
any yet known process. 

The Cinnamon mines, just over the southern border 
in New Mexico, have attracted much attention for the 
last two years. Several quartz mills are in operation 
there ; but the main yield, so far, is from the gulches, 
and the total product this year is about a quarter of 
a million dollars. San Luis Park, too, is believed to 
be rich in mineral deposits ; some promising discov- 
eries have already been made there; and indeed in 
almost every quarter of the State are the beginnings 
of developments that inspire great faiths, each in its 
own particular circle of prospectors and prophets. 

There is apparently no limit, in fact, to the growth 
of the mineral interests of Colorado. The product of 
1868 was full two millions; this year it will be at 



THE AGRICULTUEE OF COLORADO. 189 

least a million more; and the increase will go on 
indefinitely. For the business is now taken hold of 
in the right way ; pursued for the most part on strictly 
business principles; and every year must show im- 
provements in the ways and means of mining and 
treating the ores. The mountains are just full of ores 
holding fifteen to fifty dollars' worth of the metals per 
ton; and the only question, as to the amount to be 
got out, is one of labor and cost as compared with the 
profits of other pursuits. 

But inexhaustible as is Colorado's mineral wealth ; 
progressive as henceforth its development; predom- 
inant and extensive as are its mountains ; high even 
as are its valleys and plains, — in sj)ite of all seeming 
impossibilities and rivalries, Agriculture is already 
and is destined always to be its dominant interest. 
Hence my faith in its prosperity and its influence 
among the central States of the Continent. For agri- 
culture is the basis of wealth, of power, of morality ; 
it is the conservative element of all national and 
political and social growth; it steadies, preserves, 
purifies, elevates. Full one-third of the territorial 
extent of Colorado, — though this third average as 
high as Mount Washington, — is fit, more, rich for 
agricultural purposes. The grains, the vegetables and 
the fruits of the temperate zone grow and ripen in 
profusion; and through the most of it, cattle and 
sheep can live and fatten the year around without 
housing or feeding. The immediate valleys or bottom 
lands of the Arkansas and Platte and Rio Grande and 
their numerous tributaries, after they debouch from 
the mountains, are of rich vegetable loams, and need 



190 OUK NEW WEST. 

no irrigation. The uplands or plains are of a coarse, 
sandy loam, rich in the phosphates washed from the 
minerals of the mountains, and are not much in use 
yet except for pastures. When cultivated, more or 
less irrigation is introduced, and probably will always 
be indispensable for sure crops of roots and vegetables; 
but for the small, hard grains, I have no idea it will 
be generally found necessary. It is a comparatively 
dry climate, indeed ; but showers are frequent, and 
extend over a considerable part of the spring and 
summer. 

At a rough estimate, the agricultural wealth of 
Colorado in 1867 was a million bushels of corn, half a 
million of wheat, half a million of barley, oats and 
vegetables, 50,000 head of cattle, and 75,000 to 
100,000 sheep. The increase in 1868 was at least 50 
per cent. ; in the northern counties at least 1 00. 
Indeed, the agriculture of the northern counties, 
between the Pacific Kailroad at Cheyenne and Denver, 
which has grown to be full half that of the whole 
State, is the development almost entirely of the last 
three years. South, in the Arkansas and Eio Grande 
Valleys, the farming and the population are older, 
going back to before the gold discoveries. This is 
the Spanish-Mexican section, and was formerly a part 
of New Mexico. Its agriculture is on a large but 
rough scale, and only the immense crops and the 
simple habits of the people, — chiefly ignorant, de- 
graded Mexicans, — permit it to be profitable. The 
soil yields wonderfully, north and south. There was 
authentic evidence of 316 bushels of corn to the acre 
in the neighborhood of Denver last season -, 60 to 75 



THE CROPS OF COLORADO. 191 

bushels of wheat to the acre are frequently reported ; 
also 250 bushels of potatoes; and 60 to 70 of both 
oats and barley. These are exceptional yields, of 
course, and yet not of single acres, but of whole fields, 
and on several farms in different counties. Probably 
30 bushels is the average product of wheat; of corn 
no more, for the hot nights that corn loves are never 
felt there ; of oats say 50, and of barley 40, for the 
whole State. Exhaustion of the virgin freshness of 
the soil will tend to decrease these averages in the 
future ; but against that we may safely put improved 
cultivation and greater care in harvesting. The mel- 
ons and vegetables are superb ; quality, quantity, and 
size are unlike unsurpassed by any garden cultivators 
in the East. The irrigated gardens of the upper parts 
of Denver fairly riot in growth of fat vegetables; 
while the bottom lands of the neighboring valleys 
are at least equally productive without irrigation. 
Think of cabbages weighing from 50 to 60 pounds 
each ! And potatoes from 5 to 6 pounds, onions 1 to 
2 pounds, and beets 6 to 10 1 Yet here they grow, 
and as excellent as big. But hardly a beginning has 
been made in the occupation of the arable lands 
of the valleys and plains. The Cache-a-la-Poudre, 
the first branch of the Platte below Cheyenne, has 
200,000 acres of tillable land, only 5,000 of which are 
as yet cultivated. Its oat crop in 1868 averaged 48 i 
bushels to the acre, and its cows paid for themselves 
in butter in that single season. The Big Thompson 
and Boulder and the Platte itself are the other prin- 
cipal farming valleys north of Denver; and oats, 
wheat, potatoes and butter are their chief productions. 



192 OUR NEW WEST. 

The southern valleys, the South Platte, its tributary 
Bear Creek, and the Arkansas and its branches, grow 
more corn, having the warmer nights, which that 
crop loves. Even with the loose farming ways of 
the Arkansas region, where the old Spanish-Mexican 
habits more or less prevail, the grains average 30 to 
50 bushels of corn, 20 to 40 of wheat, and 40 to 45 of 
oats per acre. Provisions are cheaper now in Denver 
than in New England ; beef, indeed, is only half as 
much ; and with such bountiful results from the soil, 
and the ease and certainty of all farming operations, 
they must continue rapidly to recede. All other 
prices are indeed past assimilating to the Eastern 
standards; but the essential articles of food will al- 
ways henceforth be even lower. 

Stock-raising on the Plains is simple and profitable 
business. The animals can roam at will, and a single 
man can tend hundreds. The only enemies are the 
Indians and the diseases that the Texas cattle bring 
up from the South. But the former are the great evil; 
the confusion, danger and loss they created last sea- 
son sum up a serious blow not only to stock-raising, 
but to all farming. Even if the evil is suppressed 
hereafter, last season's raids are a year's loss to the 
agricultural interests of Colorado. Many farmers 
have given up in despair from danger and disaster, 
and retired from the field; others hesitate and refuse 
to come, who otherwise would* be there at once and 
in force of capital and energy, to enter upon the 
business. 

These great interests of mining and farming shade 
naturally into others, and already there are the be- 



THE MANUFACTURES OF COLORADO. 193 

ginnings of various manufacturing developments, as 
there are the materials and incentives for such under- 
takings without stint. Some fifteen or twenty flour- 
ing-mills are in operation throughout the State. The 
Colorado wheat makes a rich hearty flour, bearing a 
creamy golden tinge ; and I have eaten nowhere else 
in America better bread than is made from it. The 
wheat will rank with the very best that America pro- 
duces, but is more like the California grain than that 
of "the States." Coal mines are abundant, and sev- 
eral are being profitably worked along the lower 
range of the mountains; as, indeed, they have been 
found and opened at intervals along the line of the 
Pacific Eailroad over the mountains, and are already 
supplying its engines with a most excellent fuel, — a 
hard, dry, brown coal, very pure and free-burning ; in 
Boulder Yalley and Golden City, iron is being manu- 
factured from native ore; at Golden City, there is 
a successful manufactory of pottery ware and fire- 
brick; also a paper-mill and a tannery, and three 
flouring-mills ; the State already supplies its own salt; 
soda deposits are abundant everywhere, and will be 
a great source of wealth; woolen mills are projected 
and greatly needed, as wool-growing is the simplest 
of agricultural pursuits there; a valuable tin mine has 
been lately discovered and its value proved, up in the 
mountains; and this very year the Railroad will be 
one of Colorado's possessions, and bring harmony and 
unity and healthy development to all her growth, 
social, material, and political. Also, in another year, 
she will be formally admitted to the Union, and so re- 
sponsible for her own government, be it good or bad. 



194 OUR NEW WEST. 

As we came out of Colorado, Professor Agassiz was 
leading a new party in among its plains and moun- 
tains. He was already seething with enthusiasm ; all 
Brazil was nothing, he said, to what he had seen of 
natural beauty and scientific revelation in crossing 
the Plains; but the half was not told him. When he 
came face to face with the mountains, — the moun- 
tains in perfection and the mountains in ruin, — and 
their phenomena of parks and wealth of verdure, then 
indeed he might feel he was among the "Gardens 
of the Gods." The Professor found abundant mate- 
rials to sustain his wide-spread glacial theories; all 
these vast elevated plains, from Missouri River to 
Mountains, from Montana to Mexico, — the very heart 
of the Continent, — are but in his eye the deposit of 
great fields of ice, stretching down from these hills 
and washing down their bights. What must they 
have been once to have lost so much and remain so 
Titanesque ! — to be still the Mother Mountains of the 
Continent ? 

The settled population of Colorado is now at least 
fifty thousand, perhaps sixty thousand. About one- 
quarter is Mexican, all in the southern section, and 
ignorant and debased to a shameful degree. The rest 
are as good a population as any new State can boast 
of They are drawn from all eastern sources ; but the 
New England leaven, though possibly not the New 
England personality, is dominant in their ambition, 
their education, their morality, their progressive spir- 
ituality. The pioneer miners, the " prospectors," are 
a class of characters by themselves. Properly they 
never mine ; to dig out and reduce ore is not their 



WHEN TO YISIT COLORADO. 195 

vocation ; but they discover and open mines, and sell 
them, if they can ; at any rate move on to discover 
others. Men of intelligence, often cultivated, gener- 
ally handsome, mostly moral, high-toned and gallant 
by nature, sustained by a faith that seems imperisha- 
ble, putting their last dollar, their only horse, possibly 
their best blanket, into a hole that invites their hopes, 
working for wages only to get more means to live 
while they prospect anew and further, they suffer 
much, and yet enjoy a great deal. Faith is comfort, 
and that is theirs; they will "strike it rich" some 
day ; and then, and not till then, will they go back to 
the old Ohio, Pennsylvania or New England homes, 
and cheer the fading eyes of fathers and mothers, and 
claim the patient-waiting, sad-hearted girls, to whom 
they pledged their youthful loves. The vicious and 
the loafers, the gamblers and the murderers, have 
mostly "moved on;" what is left is chiefly golden 
material ; and the men and the mines and farms of 
Colorado, all alike and together, are in a healthy and 
promising condition, and insure for her a large growth 
and a generous future. The two things she lacketh 
chiefly now are appreciation at the East and women ; 
what she has of both are excellent, but in short sup- 
ply ; but the Railroad will speedily fill the vacuums. 
August is the best month in which to visit Color- 
ado, for that is nearest summer in the high moun- 
tains; the streams are lower, purer and more readily 
forded; the weather most uniformly clear. But any 
time from June 15 to September 15 will answer for 
visiting either or all its great Parks; and I beg every 
Across the Continent traveler to give at least a week 



196 - OUR NEW WEST. 

and if possible a month to the interior regions of Col- 
orado. To us their skies and their waters repeated 
the fabled fountain of perpetual youth. It is to them 
that we believe America will go, as Europe to Switzer- 
land, for rest and recreation, for new and exhilarat- 
ing scenes, for pure and bracing air, for pleasure and 
for health. They offer no wonderful valley like the 
Yo Semite; no continental river breaking through 
continental mountains like the Columbia; no cata- 
ract like Niagara; no forests like those of the Sierra 
Nevada range, no nor the equals, in diversified form 
and color and species, of those of New England or 
of Pennsylvania; and yet I am greatly mistaken if 
the verdict of more familiar acquaintance by the 
American people with America is not, that here, — 
among these central ranges of continental moun- 
tains and these great companion parks, within this 
wedded circle of majestic hill and majestic plain, 
under these skies of purity, and in this atmosphere 
of elixir, lies the pleasure-ground and health-home 
of the nation. 



X. 

BY STAGE INTO UTAH. 

The Old Stage Lines Across the Continent — Features of Domestic 
Life Among the Mountains — Some of the Women of the Border- 
Things in Cans — Game, the Antelope and the Grizzly Bear — A 
Rapid Stage Kide Down the Mountains — Entrance into the Salt 
Lake Valley — View of Salt Lake City — Its Beauty of Location, its 
Capacities of Wealth, and its Future Realizations — The Reception 
by the Mormons — A Sunday Morning Hot Sulphur Bath. 

Our stage ride of 1865 from Denver to Salt Lake 
City is an experience now of the past. With delays 
by the Indians, it was a full week through scenery 
already described in the account of the Railroad 
route, but hardly to be enjoyed now in the quick 
movement of the trains. The stage enterprises of 
that day and this region were mammoth undertak- 
ings. The proprietors made and repaired the roads; 
bridged the streams; settled and subdued the coun- 
try, — building ranches every ten or fifteen miles, and 
wherever possible gathering harvests of hay and 
grain for their horses; fought the Indians, protected 
and supplied the emigrants and the freighters, and 
literally "run" the whole civilization and barbarism of 
all the interior West Mr. HoUaday, who owned most 



198 OUR NEW WEST. 

of the continental lines then, covering nearly three 
thousand miles, had some six thousand horses and 
mules, and about three hundred coaches, paid a gen- 
eral superintendent ten thousand dollars a year, had 
to draw all his corn for the first thousand miles from 
the Missouri River at a cost often of ten to fifteen 
cents a pound, his hay frequently hundreds of miles, 
and his fuel fifty or a hundred miles ; and though the 
government paid a great price for the mails and the 
fares were high, the business was very uncertain, and 
some years he lost money. 

Two or three features of domestic and social life 
among the mountains and along the stage road con- 
stantly impressed themselves upon us. Housekeeping 
in large families, — and children do accumulate sur- 
prisingly there, — was a very serious burden to the 
wives and mothers. Their Eastern sisters, in their 
direst woes with poor servants, can have but faint 
appreciation of the burdens of living and entertain- 
ing there, where cooks and waiting girls were not to 
be had at any price. We went to rich dinners and 
bountiful teas at the homes of distinguished and 
wealthy citizens, and sat and ate without the com- 
pany of hostess or any other ladies. She and her 
friends were busy in the kitchen, and came out only 
to stand behind our chairs, and change the plates and 
pass the viands. There is an uncomfortable feeling 
in being thus entertained ; but it was the necessity 
of the country, and all parties made the best of it. 

But how women, especially, can live contentedly 
in some of those out-of-the-way places on the borders, 
working hard and constantly, among rough and self- 



CANNED FKUITS AND VEGETABLES. 199 

isli men, and preserve their tender femininity, keep 
themselves neatly and sometimes even gracefully 
dressed, and not forget their blushes under free 
compliments, would be passing strange, if we had 
not seen it daily in our journey, and did not know 
it by the whole history of the sex. We certainly 
have seen young women out here, miles away from 
neighbors, knowing no society but their husbands 
and children and the hurried travelers, — depending 
on the mails for their chief knowledge of what the 
world is doing, — who could pass, without apology or 
gaiicherie, to presiding over a Boston dinner party or 
receiving in state at Washington. Not all, indeed, 
are such, but they are frequent enough to be noted 
with both surprise and pleasure. 

Here, too, in the mining camps of the Mountains, 
and along the continental pathway, — away from home 
orchards and gardens, and city markets, — we wonder 
at as we enjoy the free use of canned vegetables, fruits, 
fish and meats. We realize for the first time how 
great is the extent of the business of their prepara- 
tion, — how useful and beneficent is the invention of 
the process. They are on every table ; few New Eng- 
land housekeepers present such a variety of excel- 
lent vegetables and fruits, as we found everywhere 
here, at every hotel and station meal, and at every 
private dinner and supper. Corn, tomatoes and beans, 
pine-apple, strawberry, cherry and peach, with oys- 
ters and lobsters, are the most common; and all of 
these, in some form or other, you may frequently find 
served up at a single meal. These canned vegeta- 
bles and fruits and fish are sold, too, at prices which 



200 OUE NEW WEST. 

seem cheap compared with the cost of other things 
out here. They range from fifty cents to one dollar 
a can of about two quarts. Families buy them in 
cases of two dozen each. And every back yard is 
near knee deep in old tin cans. 

Though the Indians did not dare to attack us, — so 
proudly did we sweep over the mountains with our 
armory of rifles^ double-barreled guns and" revolvers, 
— and game scented our approach and fled away; 
even a party of emigrants in our rear were thrown 
into terrible alarm by our firing at a mark in our 
frontj — ^yet the ridiculous little prairie dogs and the 
funnier and littler squirrels, — beautifully striped with 
black, and hardly bigger than a mouse, — sported 
carelessly in our warlike presence. One rifle brought 
down an antelope, five hundred yards away, as he 
stopped to gaze through his limpid, liquid eyes in 
wonder on our turn-out; and we found him and his 
successors most luscious eating, — the most delicate of 
the deer family, tender, melting and digestible. The 
antelopes weigh from sixty to eighty pounds, are 
fawn-like in color and appearance, have short, branch- 
ing horns, and are plenty at all seasons upon the 
high plains and in the mountains of the region. The 
elk, as large as a small cow, and with horns from four 
to six feet long, and the black-tailed deer, are rarer 
game ; this was not the season for shooting them ; 
and they cling closer to the mountains. 

Only to the grizzly bear, terror yet tempter of all 
hunters, did we give the honors of the road ; finding 
him in our path, the stage made a detour, as a trib- 
ute of respect. An old across-the-continent traveler, 



ENCOUNTER WITH A "GRIZZLY." 201 

who had met and slain every other enemy, tells the 
story of his at last finding his ambition gratified by 
coming into close range with one of these tough and 
hugging fellows. He had the advantage of seeing 
and not being seen by the animal. Now was the 
hour of his opportunity and his glory. Putting his 
rifle in order, and looking up his pistols, he again 
regarded the beast. How he had grown, meanwhile ! 
But my hero quickly drew his rifle upon him; yet 
the strange animal grew so rapidly in size that he 
bethought himself of the means of escape, if he should 
miss a fatal fire. Satisfying himself as to these, he 
raised his rifle again; but the bear had grown into 
such a monster now that the himter thought dis- 
cretion was, on the whole, the better part of valor, 
and that if the animal would let him alone, he would 
let him, and withdraw from the scene while he could, — 
and he did! 

Out of the Indian dangers, across the dreary Bitter 
Creek desert, over the continental divide, into a wel- 
come bed and breakfast at Fort Bridger, and then on 
over the rough but greener hills towards Salt Lake, 
our stage now rolled rapidly through summer and 
winter scenes, with sky of blue and air of amber 
purity ; and when the round moon came up out from 
the snowy peaks, giving indescribable richness and 
softness to their whiteness, we kept on and on, now 
up mountain sides, now along the edge of precipices 
several hundred feet high, down which the stumble 
of a horse or the error of a wheel would have plunged 
us ; now crossing swollen streams, the water up to the 
coach doors; now stammering through morass and 



202 OUR NEW WEST. 

mire, plunging down and bounding up so that we 
passengers, instead of sleeping, were bruising heads 
and tangling legs and arms in enacting the tragedy 
of pop-corn over a hot fire and in a closed dish; and 
now from up among the clouds and snow, we tore 
down a narrow canyon at a break-neck rate, escaping 
a hundred over-turns and toppling on the river's brink 
until the head swam with dizzy apprehensions. 

Finally, of a hot Sunday morning in June, the 
stage, winding through a long, dusty, narrow can- 
yon, emerged from the hills, and came out upon the 
plateau or "bench," as they call it here, that over- 
looks the valley of the Jordan, the valley alike of 
Utah Lake and the Great Salt Lake, and the valley 
of the intermediate Great Salt Lake City. It was a 
scene of rare natural beauty. To the right, upon 
the plateau, lay Camp Douglas, the home of the 
soldiers, and a village in itself, holding guard over 
the town, and within easy cannon-range of tabernacle 
and tithing-house ; right beneath, in an angle of the 
plain, which stretched south to Utah Lake and west 
to the Salt Lake, — "and Jordan rolled between," — 
was the city, regularly and handsomely laid out, 
with many fine buildings, and filled with thick gar- 
dens of trees and flowers, that gave it a fairy-land 
aspect; beyond and across, the plain spread out five 
to ten miles in width, with scattered farm-houses and 
herds of cattle ; below, it was lost in dim distance ; 
above, it gave way, twenty miles ofi", to the line of 
light that marked the beginning of Salt Lake, — the 
whole flat as a floor and sparkling with river and 
irrigating canals, and overlooked on both sides by 



GKEAT SALT LAKE CITY. 203 

hills that mounted to the snow line, and out from 
which flowed the fatness of water and soil that makes 
this once desert valley blossom under the hand of 
industry with every variety of verdure, every prod- 
uct of almost every clime. 

No internal city of the Continent lies in such a 
field of beauty, unites such rich and rare elements of 
nature's formations, holds such guarantees of great- 
ness, material and social, in the good time coming of 
our interior and Pacific development. We met all 
along the Plains and over the Mountains, the feeling 
that Salt Lake was to be the great central city of 
this West ; we found the map, with Montana, Idaho, 
and Oregon on the north, Wyoming and Colorado on 
the east, Nevada and California on the west, Arizona 
on the south, and a near connection with the sea by 
the Colorado River in the latter direction, suggested 
the same ; we recognized it in the Sabbath morning 
picture of its location and possessions; we are con- 
vinced of it as we see more and more of its opportu- 
nities, its developed industries, and its unimproved 
capacities. The only drawback lies in the Mormon 
and polygamous rule of Brigham Young and his asso- 
ciates, which repels freedom of settlement, and denies 
independent social, business and political action here, 
and keeps the city out of sympathy with the grand 
free movement of American life. But stubborn and 
fanatical as this element is, it must give way, I am 
sure, to the forcible logic of self-interest. The lust 
for many wives is weaker, after all, than the lust for 
many dollars. 

Mr. Colfax's reception in Utah was excessive if not 
13 



204 OUR NEW WEST. 

oppressive. There was an element of rivalry between 
Mormon and " Gentile " in it, adding earnestness and 
energy to enthusiasm and hospitality. First "a troop 
Cometh/' with band of music, and marched us slowly 
and dustily through their Camp Douglas. Then, es- 
caping these, our coach was waylaid as it went down 
the hill by the Mormon authorities of the city, on 
hospitable duty intent. They ordered us to dismount ; 
we were individually introduced to each of twenty 
of them; we received a long speech; we made a long 
one, — standing in the hot sand with a sun of forty 
thousand lens-power concentrated upon us, tired and 
dirty with a week's coach-ride: was it wonder that 
the mildest of tempers rebelled? — transferred to other 
carriages, our hosts drove us through the city to the 
hotel; and then, — bless their Mormon hearts for the 
thought, — they took us at once to a hot sulphur bath, 
tlmt nature liberally offers just on the confines of the 
city, and there we washed out all remembrance of the 
morning suffering and all the accumulated grime and 
fatigue of the journey, and came out baptized in fresh- 
ness and self-respect. A stream of hot sulphurous 
water like a big brook poured into a great basin that 
had been prepared for its reception; and swimming 
in its luxury of freshness and abundance, with antici- 
pations of the tens of thousands that the Railroad 
will bring; of invalids seeking strength, of the dirty 
seeking cleanliness, of connoisseurs in life seeking 
comfort, we dedicated Salt Lake City to the use and 
the enjoyment of the great American people. 



^'^V^*l/fWPlll!iifl|j|||| 




ma 'JiiJii: iiwwiii :i'»'''ii™!''-"i"'''»'^ 



XI. 

A WEEK IN SALT LAKE CITY. 

Tlie Hospitalities of Mormons and Gentiles — What we Saw and what 
we Didn't See — The Beginning and Growth of Utah — The Organ- 
ization of Labor and Immigration — Character of the Population and 
of the Rulers — The Close Church and State Government — Education 
— " The Tithings" — Brigham Young and his Power — Dining with the 
Twelve Apostles — Bathing in Salt Lake — The City and How it is 
Located and Built — The Tabernacles and Brighaln Young's Harem — 
Irrigation and Crops — The Basin Filling Up with Water — Are the 
Mormons to be Drowned Out? — The Productions of the Mormons — 
The Introduction of Manufactures — Gold and Silver Mining, and 
Brigham Young's Views on it — An Evening at the Mormon Theater. 

We had a week and an extra Sunday in Salt Lake 
City, all passed under the most favorable circum- 
stances for acquiring knowledge of its people, its in- 
stitutions, and the natural beauties and phenomena 
of the neighborhood. Mr. Colfax and his friends 
were the official guests of the city authorities (Mor- 
mons,) who showered every attention, public and 
private, upon them, and, with Brigham Young and 
other high dignitaries in church and state, seemed 
eager to gain their respect and propitiate their favor. 
These representative Mormons asserted their right- 
mindedness towards the government, reasonably be- 



208 OUR NEW WEST. 

fore and again since in doubt; talked vigorously 
against the South and slavery; explained freely and 
frankly the condition and affairs of their country; 
discussed polygamy with us alike on social, moral 
and religious grounds; gave us most excellent food 
and drink; and were every way hospitable, courte- 
ous, and as refined in manners and treatment as men 
can be who call their wives "women" and treat them 
as servants. They certainly " put their best foot fore- 
most" in our presence; if it turned out, in some 
respects, a cloven foot, — for not long after we got 
away, they began abusing the party, assailing the 
government with vituperative language, and perse- 
cuting with new zeal the anti-Mormon elements of 
their population, — it was not perhaps strange, cer- 
tainly it was no more than we expected. Such an- 
tagonisms as their peculiar institution of polygamy 
necessarilv create, — such debasement of otherwise 
healthy natures as it produces, sufficiently explain 
these inconsistencies. 

But their hearts and homes were open to us for the 
time; also, their most luxuriant and then strawberry- 
bearing gardens ; nothing was denied to us except fa- 
miliar intercourse with their families. I am not quite 
certain whether this arose from the disposition to shut 
us out from the testimony of the wives on the polyga- 
my question, or from their regarding the women so low 
as to be unworthy our attention ; probably it was from 
a mixture of both reasons that the doors of their 
harems were not open to us. Prominent Mormons, 
who had but one wife each, were not slow to give us 
the pleasure of their society; but I remember only 



THE GENTILES. 209 

one case where we were freely presented to double 
wiveSj — and then I know I felt more embarrassed than 
they seemed, in being introduced, one after another, 
to two Mrs. Jones's by the common husband. Though 
pretty and tidy, they acted the part and bore the 
manner of mere servants in his presence ; and since, 
he growing wealthy and more saint-like, younger and 
prettier companions have been added to his retinue. 
At the time of our visit, the " Gentiles," as the non- 
Mormons are called, had both a pleasant and vigorous 
social organization in Salt Lake City. They had con- 
gregational worship, a Sunday-school, a daily paper, 
and frequent social festivities; and, though only two 
or three hundred in number, they comprised many 
families of culture and influence, merchants, federal 
civil officers, agents of telegraph and stage lines, and 
officers of the army, stationed near by, and were 
making a pretty strong aggressive warfare on the 
faith of the saints. Some of them were repentant and 
rebellious Mormons; and altogether they seemed the 
"cloud no bigger than a man's hand" that would 
spread over the whole Mormon heavens. But since 
that time, the life has been greatly stamped out of 
them by Brigham Young's cunning persecutions. 
Their men of business have been overawed by with- 
drawal of Mormon patronage; in one or two cases, 
where Gentiles undertook to maintain legal rights 
against Mormons, they have been waylaid and shot; 
they have had no encouragement or help from the 
government at Washington, — for a full year a reign 
of terror prevailed among them, and their minister 
and many others retired from the field of conflict; 



210 OUR NEW WEST. 

and only now again is there a positive nucleus of 
Gentile influence, social, religious and materialj re- 
newed in the city. Both Catholic and Episcopal mis- 
sionaries are upon the ground; and with the results 
of railroad communication to aid them, — its additions 
to, and diversifications of, the populations and inter- 
ests of the city and territory, — the Gentile elements 
seem sure to increase, to grow bold, and to make a 
permanent and successful contest for fair play and 
equal rights in this center of a religious, social and 
political despotism, as exclusive and as cruel as that 
of slavery ever was in the South. 

It is over twenty years since the pioneer band of 
Mormons, driven oflf by the persecutions of their 
neighbors in Illinois and Missouri, and led by Brigham 
Young, though he was not yet the real head of the 
church, wandered wildly across the Plains and over 
the Mountains in search of a new home. Coming 
out of the last range of the Rocky Mountains, into 
this beautiful basin, no wonder they had a revelation 
to stop and plant their banners here. But it was 
then dry and unfruitful ; the summer sun baked the 
earth ; the winter's snows covered it ; only by living 
on roots and coarse herbs and meanest of animals 
did they survive the first year ; only by patient toil, 
and the introduction of irrigation over their lands, 
were they able to produce recompensing crops. But 
a fanatical zeal inspired them ; necessity drove them ; 
the will of a master-spirit in Young led them ; and 
they established themselves, and sent back for their 
associates, scattered through the border States of the 
then West. 'With, these began, too, the overland 



MOEMON IMMIGRATIOISr FROM EUROPE. 211 

emigration to California, inspired by the gold dis- 
coveries of 1849, and out of the latter, thej drew 
recruits, and better, they got a market for their sur- 
plus products. Thus they gained a foothold • thus, — 
by gold and silver discoveries in territories beyond 
and around them, — have they largely gained their 
subsequent growth and wealth. California, Nevada, 
Idaho and Montana have each in turn contrib- 
uted to the success of Utah. No industry, living 
within and on itself, no mere zeal of religion, no mere 
lust of flesh could have planted such a State, could 
have bred such a power as centers now in the valley 
of Salt Lake. 

But the second great fact in the history of Utah is 
the recruiting of its population direct from Europe. 
America might furnish the leaders, but never the 
followers for such a society as this; and almost at 
the beginning, missionaries were sent among the igno- 
rant and struggling farmers, miners and mechanics of 
England and the north of Europe, to gain converts 
and recruits. The appeals to their desire for greater 
physical comfort, — for a home of independence and 
plenty, — with the offer of the means of emigration, 
— firing them, where possible, with a simple religious 
zeal, — polygamy being in no general sense one of 
the motives offered, or doctrines preached, — brought 
abundant followers; and thus has the population of 
Utah been made up. Of its hundred thousand or 
more residents, five-sixths at least are the direct re- 
sults of these emigration movements. Keaching here, 
their homes and their lives were assigned them; their 
industry organized and enforced; and they were made 



212 OUE NEW WEST. 

not only self-supporting but contributors to the com- 
mon wealth of the church. The expenses of their 
emigration were charged to them, and thej were 
obliged to work them out. It is in the organization 
of this emigration, and of its labor after coming 
here, that the great ability has been displayed in the 
creation and maintenance of this State. No so wide- 
spread a community in the country probably has, on 
the average, so industrious and thrifty, and yet so 
ignorant a population. It thinks little, but works 
much; the dependence and mental debasement of 
their European life are continued ; their only improve- 
ment is in physical well-being; their sole intellectual 
stimulus is in the direction of a coarse, material re- 
ligion and a fanatical faith in the fathers of the church. 
For never on the American Continent was there 
organized so complete a union of church and state as 
here. The political, social and business organizations 
of Utah are, each and all, subservient to that of the 
church. The machinery of that is complete and in- 
timate ; it reaches everywhere, it controls everything. 
Never was there a more perfect religious autocracy 
than governs Utah. The federal officers, sent here 
as the executive and judicial organization of the 
Territory, find themselves powerless. The Territo- 
rial Legislature, the juries, and the local police, are 
made up entirely of Mormons, subservient to the 
church organization. There is no sympathy here 
with the federal government, only a hollow, cheat- 
ing recognition of it. Without an army, none of its 
laws can be enforced; no jury can be found even to 
recognize offenses under them. So the federal office- 



HOW THE MORMONS REIGN AND RULE. 213 

holders either settle into a profitable and pleasant 
subserviency to Brigham Young; fret themselves 
with vain endeavors to uphold the central authority 
and resist the Mormon defiance; or stand and wait, 
spectators and witnesses of offenses they cannot pre- 
vent or punish, bearing a vain testimony so far to 
the unity and completeness of a power as utterly 
foreign to the spirit of the Republic, as utterly an- 
tagonistic to its authority, as a branch of the Turkish 
empire, set down in the interior of our Continent, 
would be. 

Conflict with federal authority is, however, care- 
fully, cunningly avoided. It is a passive not an open 
resistance that is set up against it. And so thorough 
is the organization of the church, so subservient are 
the people, that this policy is not so difficult to main- 
tain as it would be in any other American com- 
munity. City and Territory are parcelled out into 
districts, with a bishop or elder, closely affiliated 
with the central authority, set over each. This 
man, bound by comphcity in the cardinal sin of 
polygamy and the common opportunity of money- 
making, is preacher, chief of police and magistrate 
alike ; monopolizes or shares in the trade of his pre- 
cinct; and expounds and administers the law to the 
generally ignorant people of his precinct, who are 
kept to the simple industries of the farm and the 
household, and forbidden by the enforced levies of 
the church and the high prices charged for every- 
thing they may wish to buy, as well as by the feeble- 
ness of their ignorance, from ever rising above that 
sphere. Hard vv^ork and a simple morality are strictly 



214 OUR NEW WEST. 

enforced habits. They rank along with faith in Brig- 
ham Young, subserviency to his decrees, and hatred 
of Gentiles, as the cardinal doctrines of Mormonism. 
Distilling and liquor-selling are monopolized by the 
church and its officers; three or four " Gentile " liquor 
shops are permitted in Salt Lake City, but they are 
burdened with license charges of three hundred dol- 
lars a month each by the Mormon authorities; while 
the followers of the church are strictly forbidden to 
frequent them. Disorder, child of independence, 
would be a fatal element, and so everything which 
leads to either is most carefully eliminated from Mor- 
mon society. Thus, in the name of thrift and order 
and morality, is the subserviency necessary to Mor- 
mon rule maintained ; and the conceded results of 
temperance and industry and aggregate wealth, so 
often pointed at with pride by the Mormon writers 
and orators, are purchased by the destruction of 
everything that marks or secures individual growth. 
As a matter of course, general education is not in 
great favor. In 1865, there were no Sunday-schools 
in the Mormon Church, and no day schools but pri- 
vate ones, and these under the patronage and con- 
trol of the church authorities. The criticism and 
example of the Gentiles, and the demands of the 
better class of their own parents, have since driven 
the Mormon managers to introduce Sunday-schools, 
and to increase the opportunities for general instruc- 
tion. But the schools are still practically private ; 
though the school-houses are built by the public, i. e., 
the church, tuition fees are charged ; the teachers are 
of a low order and exclusively Mormons ; the instruc- 



BEIGHAM YOUNG AND HIS POWEE. 215 

tion is narrow and limited, and embraces, as a cardinal 
feature, faith in the Mormon rules ; and such as it is, 
the last statistics show that only half of the children 
in the Territory, between the ages of 4 and 16, are 
able or are allowed to avail themselves of it. 

Brigham Young is at the head of everything; all 
tributes pour into him ; all authority flows out from 
him as the center of church and state. He dispenses 
favor; he administers justice and injustice; he re- 
ceives the revenues, and he spends them, — both with- 
out any apparent accountability ; the best farms are 
his; the largest saw-mills, the most prospering manu- 
factories; of all the good things, whether women, or 
lands, or forests, coal mines, or contracts, he has, if 
not the monopoly, certainly the first choice, and the 
disposition of all. There is immense wealth in his 
possession; but what proportion of it he calls his 
own, and what the church's, no one knows, — he ap- 
parently recognizes no distinction. The church rule, 
that every man shall contribute one-tenth of all his 
productions or profits each year to the church, is 
rigidly enforced wherever possible without serious 
rebellion. The most of the population, particularly 
all those who cultivate the soil, observe it, paying 
their contributions "in kind;" and this practically 
gives the church the control of all the produce mar- 
kets of the country. The few rich manufacturers 
and traders, who some years harvest great profits, 
but who are generally closely affiliated with Young, 
either escape the "tithing" altogether, or compound 
for it by a special money contribution. Some of the 
"Gentile "merchants have heretofore kept the peace 



216 OUR NEW WEST. 

with the authorities by respecting, directly or indi- 
rectly, the "tithing" rate of the church; but lately 
Young and his coadjutors have undertaken to crush 
out all opposition by establishing, as a strict rule of 
the church, that Mormons must, on no aceount, trade 
with any but Mormons. The pains and penalties of 
exclusion from the church and utter damnation after 
death are threatened for those who disobey this rule. 
The first effects of this were greatly injurious, if not 
fatal, to many Gentile merchants in Salt Lake City; 
but its full results are not yet determined. It is 
probably not universally obeyed, and its force will 
weaken rather than increase with the movement of 
population and competition consequent upon the 
Kailroad. There are certainl}^ several very large and 
wealthy Gentile mercantile houses in Salt Lake City; 
and a considerable percentage of the trade and busi- 
ness life of the town is in such hands. 

Next to Young, whose title is President, and whose 
province is unlimited, are a Council of Twelve 
Apostles, the first of whom is Vice-President. Below 
these is the order of the Seventies, included in 
which are the Bishops and Elders ; and these, with a 
small circle of capable business men, attached to 
Young and the church, apparently by mercenary or 
lustful motives alone, make up the entire governing 
power of City and Territory. Five hundred must be 
a large allowance for the men in authority and in 
influence, and half of these I should say were only 
powerful by reason of a narrow, bigoted zeal, that 
made them useful in carrying out the decrees of men 
of broader power and more mixed motives. Brigham 



HOW WE PASSED OUR WEEK. 217 

Young is not the only man of real power in this or- 
ganization; and it is not safe to say it would crumble 
to pieces with his death ; but the number of those, 
both capable and willing to lead a crusade for its 
maintenance, I do not believe exceeds a dozen. It is 
easy to recognize among many of the most prominent 
men in this autocracy mere camp followers, who 
would never, of choice, endanger either lives or 
property in its maintenance. Under strong pressure 
or temptation, they would hasten to make terms for 
themselves. But for the time, the organization is 
compact and vigorous, and apparently able and ready 
to make a fight for its existence and independence. 

But this is not describing how we passed our week 
among the Saints and Sinners of Salt Lake City. We 
went out in the mornings to see the city ; the wonder- 
ful hot sulphur springs, baths for all the rheumatics 
and dyspeptics of our especially rheumatic and dys- 
peptic American nation ; the cotton-factory and model 
flouring-mill of President Young; the orchard and 
garden of "Brother" Felt; the great store and the 
new tannery of "Brother" Jennings; the silk-worm 
beginnings of "Brother" Watt, who wanted to marry 
his half-sister, but Brigham Young, finding she was 
pretty, "sealed" her to himself; but, finding she was 
false, "sealed" her back again, and she is now one of 
her brother's wives ; up the canyons for the water- 
works and the view of the valley; and so on. In the 
afternoons, we dined out with the " twelve Apostles," 
on fat and juicy mutton, rich and rare roast beef, 
turkeys of the New England Thanksgiving pattern, 
vegetables to match in every variety, and plum-pud- 



218 OUR NEW WEST. 

ding a la King George, with golden seal champagne 
and deep old port to moisten their digestion, — what^ 
ever these Apostles preach to their followers, they 
are not necessarily ascetics themselves ; — while in 
the evenings, we went to Gentile strawberry festi- 
vals and danced with pretty girls who were content 
to have many lovers but one husband, or took a quiet 
tea with a one-wive Mormon. Again we spent the 
day with the soldiers at Camp Douglas, back of the 
city, and heard the black, sad side of Mormonism, as 
told to them by its victims, or made a long excursion 
over to Rush Valley, where the discharged California 
soldiers were hopefully developing silver mines. Our 
Mormon hosts took us, one day, on a picnic excur- 
sion to Salt Lake, — a "stag" picnic, be it noted, — 
so we could bathe mi naturel, our friends said, — so 
we should not ask their "women" how they liked 
polygamy, we thought. 

This Lake is, indeed, the phenomenon of the whole 
interior basin. It lies across the valley fifteen miles 
from the city, is very irregular in shape, but about 
fifty miles wide by a hundred long, and Salter than 
any ocean ; so salt, indeed, that fish cannot live in it, 
that three quarts will boil down to one quart of fine 
pure salt, and on whose dense waters the bather can 
float like a cork, though the sharp brine must be kept 
from his mouth and eyes under penalty of severe 
smarting. High rocky islands stud its area; under 
the free wind of the open country, its waves have an 
ocean roll, and will breed sea-sickness at short notice ; 
but its picturesque surroundings, the superb sunsets 
within its waters, and the buoyant brine, all invite to 



THE LOCATION OF THE CITY. 219 

pleasure-sailing upon its surface. What elements 
these, and the plentiful sulphur springs of the neigh- 
boring hills, and the charming scenery of the whole 
valley, and especially the fine location and premature 
development of the city, all are in the making of Salt 
Lake the great interior watering-place of the Conti- 
nent ! Invalids and pleasure-seekers will flock hither 
by the thousands ; and the simplicity of Mormon life, 
with its single indulgence, will sooner or later be sup- 
planted by the various resources of pleasure that 
fertile and self-indulgent fashion can combine around 
a new and greater Saratoga. But when we came out 
of our bath in Salt Lake, a thin crust of fine salt dried 
upon our bodies, and in rubbing ourselves off with 
towels, we had a most excellent substitute for a rough 
flesh-brush. 

The city has, indeed, a most charming location, and 
is happily laid out and improved. Coming out of the 
mountains on the east and north, we enter upon a 
high plateau or "bench" of land, commanding the 
valley for forty or fifty miles to the south, and west 
tq Salt Lake and the mountains that seem to rise 
from out of the water, and, stretching southward, 
guard the valley in that direction. The city lies 
directly below, on a second or third bench or grada- 
tion, as the open plain falls away into the lower val- 
ley, through which the River Jordan sluggishly winds 
its way from Utah Lake, forty miles in the south, into 
Salt^Lake itself, the home of all the streams of the 
mountains and valleys around. Between river and 
lake, and under the highest mountains, on what seems 
almost a level plain, but holding a grade that keeps 



220 OUR NEW WEST. 

the irrigating streams in quick motion, and promotes 
dryness and health, — with wide sweep of fertile val- 
ley before it, Salt Lake shimmering with the sunlight 
in the far distance, and the delaying Jordan ribbon- 
ing the gardens of grain and grass below, — with 
mountains behind white-capped in snow even under 
the summer's sun, and hills in front that often rival 
them in hight and garniture, — Salt Lake City spreads 
itself with luxuriance of space, and with luxuriance 
of garden and orchard growth, that almost hides its 
buildings. 

The streets are broad and regular, — one hundred 
feet from curb to curb, — dividing the town into 
squares of just ten acres, and these again are di- 
vided into eighths, which leaves an acre and a quar- 
ter for each home. Only in the business streets and 
in the lower and poorer quarters are these home 
lots subdivided. The houses were originally alto- 
gether of adobe, or mud bricks dried in the sun; 
now, stone and red brick are introduced for the 
larger buildings and stores, and lumber varies with 
the earlier material in dwellings and second-rate busi- 
ness establishments. The houses are mostly small, 
and a story or a story and a half in hight; they 
often suggest the peculiar institution of the country 
by a long frontage with numerous distinct entrances. 
The number of wives a man has is frequently indi- 
cated by the number of front doors to his house. 

A full square of ten acres in the center of the city 
is devoted to the central church edifices. Here is the 
old Tabernacle, a large, low, barn-like structure, hold- 
ing several thousand people ; also the new Tabernacle, 



BRIGHAM young's SQUARE. 221 

which will contain from ten to fifteen thousand, is two 
hundred and fifty feet long, one hundred and fifty 
feet wide, and ninety high, built of stone, covered by 
a grand arched dome, and looks in the distance like a 
huge deep platter turned bottom up. In the most 
conspicuous location of the same square lie the foun- 
dations of the Grand Temple, begun many years ago, 
and to be finished when the church has leisure and 
money enough. The plan proposes a structure that 
rivals the cathedrals of Europe, and is grander than 
any church edifice in America. This square is sur- 
rounded by a strong, high wall of adobe brick and 
plaster. 

Similarly guarded from cunning eyes or profane 
entrance by a high, strong wall, is Brigham Young's 
entire square, opposite. Within this are the "tith- 
ing-house," where are gathered in the tenth part of 
every man's yearly productions or profits, the other 
offices and store-houses of the church, two large 
houses for Young and his extensive family and his 
private offices, a school-house with cupola for his 
children, immense barns and sheds for his animals, 
and far in the rear his grand model flouring-mill. 
Fine gardens and orchards fill up the vacant places. 
Here is the central life and authority of the State. 
The telegraph of the church, extending all over the 
Territory, centers here, and here is the office of the 
special church newspaper organ. 

The principal business street is long and well built. 

There are a few stores of the very first character, 

both in size, amount and variety of goods, and extent 

of business done. There are several firms, some 

14 



222 OUR NEW WEST. 

Mormon, others not, that do a business of a million 
and over each every year. The great Mormon estab- 
lishments often connect manufacturing of some kind 
with their business, and frequently have branch stores 
all over the territory ; but they are all in the hands 
of close allies, relatives, or subservient instruments of 
Brigham Young, and are under his sharp surveillance. 
The hotels, two of which are large and well managed, 
are all kept by Mormons ; and so far as possible, all 
the avenues to money-making, all the instrumen- 
talities of life in the city, are in the hands of creatures 
of the head of this Church and State organization. 
If a Mormon is suspected of unsoundness, or is getting 
too rich and powerful, he is persecuted out of the 
way, or " called of God " to go as missionary some- 
where, and leave his business in somebody else's 
hands, or the " tithings " are applied so sharply as to 
keep his fortune within reasonable bounds. Many 
cases are given in illustration of these and other ways 
of enriching the church and preventing the growth 
of individual power. 

Within the last few months, a new plan has been 
devised for extending and compacting the business 
affiliations of the church. It is that of putting all 
extensive trade and manufacturing operations into 
cooperative associations, and inviting all the Mormon 
population to take shares in them. The great Mor- 
mon stores in Salt Lake City have been thus con- 
verted, and the principle is rapidly extending to all 
business enterprises in every part of the Territory. 
It has two advantages, — that of extending the com- 
mon interests of the grand organization, and ensuring 



irrigatio:n' and the crops. 223 

the enforcement of the rule that Mormons shall buy 
only of Mormons, and that of distributing the losses 
of any revulsions in business, or any break-down of 
the Mormon rule, growing out of the revolutionary 
influences of the Railroad. It strengthens the power 
of the leaders, and it enables them to change their 
investments, or, as they say in Wall street, to ^'un- 
load." 

The long dry summers of all our New West render 
irrigation a necessity to all diversified culture of the 
soil. The Mormons were the first people in the United 
States to resort to this means of counteracting the pe- 
culiarities of this western climate. They began it at 
once on their arrival in the Salt Lake Yalley, and have 
carried it to a good degree of perfection, especially 
in the city and its neighborhood. The streams that 
come out from the mountains are diverted and di- 
vided through the streets of the town, and among the 
farms of the valley above the River Jordan. Thus 
lively brooks course down the gutters of the streets, 
keeping the shade trees alive and growing, supplying 
drink for animals and water for household purposes, 
and delightfully cooling the summer air; besides be- 
ing drawn off in right proportion for the use of each 
garden. Once a week is the rule for thus watering 
each crop ; to-day a man takes enough for one portion 
of his garden; to-morrow for another; and so through 
his entire possessions and the week. Under this reg- 
ular stimulus, with a strong soil, made up of the wash 
of the mountains, the finest of crops are obtained; 
the vegetable bottom lands of the New England rivers 
or of the interior prairies cannot vie with the prod- 



224 OUR NEW WEST. 

ucts of the best gardens and farms of these western 
valleys and plains nnder this system of irrigation. 
There needs to be enough rain in the spring or win- 
ter moisture remaining to start the seeds, and there 
generally is; after that, the regular supply of water 
keeps the plants in a steady and rapid growth, that 
may well be supposed to produce far finer results, 
than the struggling, uneven progress of vegetation 
under dependence upon the skies, — a week or a 
month of rain, and then a like prolongation of sun- 
shine. The gardens in the cities and villages are 
tropical in their rich greenness and luxuriance. I 
do not believe the same space of ground anywhere 
else in the country holds so much and so fine fruit 
and vegetables as the city of Salt Lake to-day. 

The soil of this and the smaller neighboring valleys 
is especially favorable to the small grains. Fifty and 
sixty bushels is a very common crop of wheat, oats 
and barley; and over ninety have been raised. Pres- 
ident Young once raised ninety-three and a half 
bushels of wheat on a single acre. I should say the 
same soil located in the East, and taking its chances 
without irrigation, would not produce half what it 
does here with irrigation. Laborious and expensive 
as the process must be, the large crops and high 
prices obtained for them have made it a very profit- 
able recourse. 

But a singular change seems to be creeping over 
all our Western regions under settlement, in this 
matter of climate and of rain. Summer rains are 
palpably on the increase, and the necessity of irri- 
gation is lessening, especially for the grains and slow- 



EXTENT OF THE MORMON" SETTLEMENTS. 225 

growing vegetables. When the Mormons first came 
here, there was no rain from April to November; but 
now summer showers are of frequent occurrence. It 
is so in Colorado and in California, — there is a growth 
in the moisture of the summer and a lessening need 
of artificial watering for the main crops. The phe- 
nomenon is peculiar, and has jet received no satis- 
factory explanation. Connected with this change, it 
is observed here that Salt Lake is growing in size 
and freshness, and the Jordan increasing in width 
and sluggishness of movement. In broader phrase, 
the whole basin, once evidently filled with water, is 
slowly returning to its old condition. The Lake is 
rising at the rate of a foot a year. General Connor's 
little steamboat, that has been carrying ties for the 
Kailroad across the Lake during the last year, cer- 
tainly rode for a mile over w^hat was good grazing- 
ground five years before. Does Providence propose 
to drown the Mormons out, and with water solve the 
problem that is puzzling our moral philosophers and 
statesmen ? 

The country drained by the Great Salt Lake is 
about one hundred and fifty miles east and west, and 
two hundred and fifty north and south. Four or ^Ye 
large streams of fresh water pour into it ; and the 
facts already stated, that it has no visible outlet, and 
that its waters are one-fourth salt, mock science and 
make imagination ridiculous. Other salt is found in 
the country ; there is a mountain of rock salt a few 
miles away ; and below in Arizona is a similar moun- 
tain, whose salt is as pure as finest glass, and a beauti- 
ful specimen of which Brigham Young showed to us. 



226 OUR NEW WEST. 

The Territory of Utah covers the region drained 
by the Salt Lake, and perhaps one hundred miles 
more, both in breadth and length. But the Mormon 
settlements extend one hundred miles farther into 
Idaho on the north, and perhaps two hundred miles 
into Arizona on the south, clinging close, through 
their entire length of six hundred to seven hundred 
miles, to a narrow belt of country hardly more than 
fifty miles wide ; for on the east of this are the moun- 
tains, and to the west the great Central American 
Desert, that forms part of the great internal basin of 
this section of the Continent, and leads the traveler 
on to the Sierra Nevada Mountains of the Pacific 
States. These settlements are mostly small, counting 
inhabitants by hundreds, gathered about the course 
of a mountain stream ; but there are several places 
of considerable importance, as Provo in the south^ 
and Ogden, where the Railroad enters the valley, in 
the north. They tempt a railroad line down to the 
Colorado River, which is navigable to a point six 
hundred miles south of Salt Lake City, and doubt- 
less one will sooner or later be built. In 1865, be- 
fore the Pacific Railroad was so quickly promised, 
the Mormons were making promising experiments 
in bringing their goods by steamboat up the Colo- 
rado River, and thence by teams up through the 
line of their settlements to the capital, as likely to 
be cheaper than teaming them across the Plains and 
over the Mountains from the Missouri ; and this route 
is quite sure to be developed and improved in the 
near future. 

The population of the Territory is probably from 



MANUFACTURES IN UTAH. 227 

one hundred thousand to one hundred and twenty- 
five thousand; of whom from twenty-five thousand 
to thirty-five thousand are in Salt Lake City. Before 
the entrance of the Raih^oad into the valley, not more 
than three or four thousand were non-Mormons or 
Gentiles. The policy of the leaders has been to con- 
fine their people to agriculture; to develop a self-sus- 
taining rural population, quiet, frugal, industrious, 
scattered in small villages, and so manageable by the 
church organization. So far, it has been admirably 
successful; and it has created an industry and a pro- 
duction here, in the center of the western half of our 
Continent, of immense importance and value to the 
future growth of the region. The land is cut up into 
small sections, and most of the farms are very small. 
Indeed, of the forty-three million acres that the Ter- 
ritory measures, only about half a million are sup- 
posed to be capable of culture, and the number under 
cultivation is estimated at one hundred and thirty- 
four thousand, or about one acre to an inhabitant. 
Every man is encouraged to raise everything possible 
needed for his sustenance, and this gained, and the 
church securing its share, there is not apt to be much 
left for profit. 

Following out the principle of self-support and 
independence, the simple manufactures have been 
gradually introduced. Several small cotton-mills and 
one or tw^o woolen-mills are in successful operation; 
hides are plenty, and there is a tannery, also a manu- 
factory of boots and shoes; cotton grows in the 
southern settlements, and persistent and partially 
successful efibrts have been made to introduce the 



228 OUR NEW WEST. 

silk worm. Wood and lumber are scarce and high, 
the former fifteen dollars a cord, and the latter forty 
to sixty dollars a thousand. Coal is found in the 
mountains, but fifty miles away, and before the Rail- 
road was open it cost in the city thirty to thirty-five 
dollars a ton. There are at least a hundred flouring- 
mills in the Territory, and flour, grain, butter, bacon, 
home-made socks and yarn, and dried peaches are 
the principal productions in excess of consumption. 
Probably two hundred thousand pounds of dried 
peaches were sold to the Idaho and Montana miners 
in the year ( 1864 ) of the greatest emigration to 
those territories. Alive not only to all opportunities 
for making money, but to the necessity for supplying 
every want of their population, that there may be no 
room for an antagonistic element, the Mormon leaders 
are now alert to introduce such other and higher 
classes of manufactures as an increased prosperity 
and the facilities of the Railroad may put in demand. 
Among these are wagons and agricultural implements, 
for which a company is formed and other preparations 
made. 

With wise instinct of its depraving distractions and 
its rarely recompensing pursuit, Brigham Young has 
persistently discouraged all mining operations among 
his people. He has been fortunate in having no rich 
discoveries made within his lines to tempt them to 
break his commands. Occasionally there has been a 
temporary excitement over placer diggings here and 
there in the mountains, or over discoveries of dc' 
posits of gold or silver ores; but none of them have 
ever amounted to much. The Gentiles have, liow^ 



THE SALT LAKE THEATER. 229 

ever, wasted much labor and money in prospecting 
and trying to work some silver mines in Rush Valley, 
about twenty-five miles from Salt Lake City, but 
though here and at other points there are undoubted 
deposits of the precious metals that, by and by, with 
cheap labor and simple processes for reduction, will 
pay to work, as yet nothing in this line has proved 
recompensing. Iron, the Mormons admit, exists in 
large quantities, particularly in the southern moun- 
tains; they have made some efforts to develop and 
work it, but failed for want of proper workmen and 
materials. But as to gold and silver, they are in- 
credulous; and not only that. President Young argues 
that the world has many times more of both than 
it needs for financial purposes; that the country is 
poorer to-day for all the mining of gold and silver 
in the last twenty years; and that for every dollar 
gained by it, four dollars have been expended. 

Chief among the distractions of the week was a 
performance at the Salt Lake theater in honor of 
the distinguished guests. For the worldly wisdom 
that presides here has made generous provision for 
the amusement of the people. The theater is one of 
the finest and largest buildings in the city; it com- 
pares well with the best opera-houses of the East 
in size and appointments; and the performances in 
it are always respectable and sometimes very supe- 
rior. There is generally a star actor or two from 
the East or from California; but the principal por- 
tion of the performers are amateurs, — merchants and 
mechanics, clerks and laborers, wives and daughters 
of citizens of Salt Lake City. The scenery and dresses 



230 OUR NEW WEST. 

are all first-class, and there is evidently a stage mana- 
ger who understands his business. We had a drama 
and a spectacular farce for our evening's entertain- 
ment ; and I have rarely seen a theatrical perform- 
ance more pleasing and satisfactory in all its details 
and appointments. Yet the two principal men charac- 
ters were by a day-laborer and a carpenter ; one of 
the leading women parts was by a married daughter 
of Brigham Young, herself the mother of several chil- 
dren ; and several other of his daughters took part 
in the ballet, which was most enchantingly rendered, 
and with great scenic effect. 

The house was full in all its parts, and the audience 
embraced all classes of society, from the wives and 
daughters of President Young, — a goodly array, — 
and the families of the rich merchants, to the families 
of the mechanics and farmers of the city and valley, 
and the soldiers from the camp. Babies were in 
plenty; and these, with long rows of wives, and a 
patriarchal-looking old gentleman at the head, testi- 
fied to the polygamous institution. Out of respect to 
the strangers, Brigham Young sat with his "first wife" 
in a private box, and did not thrust the retinue of his 
lechery before us. He built and owns the theater, 
which cost $200,000. It is run in the name of and 
for the benefit of the church; and as most of the 
actors and actresses cost nothing, and the institution 
is naturally popular, it is understood to be quite 
profitable. The prices of admission are nominally 
high; but the doorkeeper takes pay in "produce," 
and many a farmer from the valley drives up with 
the whole or part of his family, and a load of grain, 



"GARDEN SASS LEGAL TENDER IN UTAH. 231 

pork, or "garden sass/' to buy their entrance to the 
evening's entertainment in the theater. It proves, 
indeed, a most useful and popular social center and 
amusement for the whole people, and its creation was 
a wise and beneficent thought. 

But even all these were not the most interesting 
or important features of our week's experiences and 
observations in Salt Lake City. 



xn. 

MEN AND WOMEN, OR POLYGAMY, IN UTAH. 

Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball, and other Leading Apostles — 
Long Interviews and Talks with Them — Discussion about Polyq;amy 
— Suggestion of a New Revelation against it — Later Extension of 
Polygamy — The Sabbath Services of the Mormons — Preaching by 
Brigham Young — Extracts from Mormon Sermons — Mr. Colfax in 
the Mormon Pulpit — How does Polygamy Work? — The Children 
— The Husbands and the Wives — What the Latter Say and How 
they Bear it — Illustrations of Polygamous Life and Habits — Brig- 
ham Young's Children and Wives — Beauty and the Beast — List 
of Young's Harem. 

Of course we had a good deal of curiosity, while in 
Utah, to study the persons and characters of the 
Mormon leaders and the operation of polygamy 3 and 
though one avenue to information was largely denied 
us, every other was freely open, and the lacking 
in that was measurably made up to us by plenty of 
second-hand testimony from and about the fractional 
wives of the saints. When we arrived, Brigham 
Young was away from the city; but he soon came 
back in grand state, for he travels among his subjects 
like an oriental prince, with procession of carriages 
and men on horseback. He takes with him always 
two personal servants, one a barber, and the other 




S.Lr Lak. Cxxr-BB:aH.M Yoo.o-Pkoposkb Mo;:;;;^p,, 



HOW BRIGHAM YOUNG LOOKS. 235 

one of his wives. Directly lie came, with half a 
dozen of his Apostles, to pay his respects to Mr. 
Colfax, — for the Speaker had given out that he 
should observe Washington etiquette, and not call 
first on him, which pleased the Gentiles, — and they 
spent most of a morning with us. We had free and 
familiar talk of the Territory and its industries, of 
the scenery, of irrigation, of the Indians, of every- 
thing but the one theme upon which both sides were 
the most eager to compare notes. Young explained 
to me the Mormon policy as to the Indians ; in brief, 
it was that they had found it cheaper and easier to 
feed them than to fight them. But, he said, they 
could not last long ; the food and the diseases of civ- 
ilization are killing them off; even white bread, of 
which they are very fond, weakens and destroys their 
constitutions. And he told of an Indian boy, whom 
he took into his family, robust and healthy, but, 
thouo:h he fared as well as his own children, he soon 
sickened and died. 

Brigham Young is a well-preserved, good-looking 
man of now near seventy years; stout, smooth-faced, 
self-controlled; slow and careful of speech; with a 
light gray eye, cold and uncertain; a thin, short un- 
der-lip and chin, betraying great power of will, and 
which shrank and curled and quivered under feeling 
with a most devilish ugliness. That lip and that 
chin were the only indexes to his character, as ex- 
hibited in his life, that I could find either in his face 
or manner; but they showed that he would allow 
nothing to stand in the way of his purposes. There 
was not the faintest sign of rashness or weakness, but 



236 OUR NEW WEST. 

abundant token of the spirit that would send and has 
sent men to a sudden grave, in the most cool and 
relentless manner, for resisting his authority or stand- 
ing in the way of his purposes. He is physically a 
handsome man, and takes great pains with his dress; 
but he was to me repellant in personal atmosphere. 
In conversation, he is cool, quiet, but intelligent and 
suggestive, has strong, original ideas, but conveys 
them with rather coarse and ungrammatical language. 
He was somewhat formal, but courteous, and at the 
last affected frankness and freedom, if he felt it not; 
and when his eye did sparkle and his lips soften, it 
was with most cheering, though not warming, effect; 
it was pleasant but did not melt you. 

Heber C. Kimball ranked next to Young in church 
and state, when we were there, and was accounted by 
the Mormons to hold the gift of prophecy in even 
more divine degree than his leader. But he seemed 
to us, from all we saw and heard of him, a blessed old 
rascal; unctuous in looks and manners as Macassar 
hair oil, and pious in phrase as good old Thomas a 
Kempis ; but a consummate hypocrite, hard and tricky 
at a bargain in worldly matters, and tyrannical to his 
long retinue of sorry-looking wives, the happiest day 
of whose lives was that of his death. His office 
appeared to be that of keeper of the seals of Heaven, 
and the fulminator of the Divine wrath or the dis- 
penser of the Divine grace, and he distributed both 
about with equal vulgarity and repulsiveness. 

George A. Smith is another of the head Apostles, 
and succeeded Kimball as Vice-President. He is one 
of the oldest and most faithful Mormons, very intelli- 



THE APOSTLES AND THEIR WIVES. 237 

gent in their history, and a heavy, full-orbed man, 
with solid qualities of body and mind, who contents 
himself with five wives. Two of the Apostles, Amasa 
Lyman and Franklin Richards, are Massachusetts 
men 3 several others are Englishmen, who are now 
creeping into place and power in the church; and 
they all average four wives each. Perhaps the most 
refined man of our hosts in personal appearance and 
manners was a Mr. Felt, originally from Salem, Mass. ; 
he lived in a very neat two-story cottage, embowered 
with trees, and with two or three suggestive front 
doors. But the American proportion, both of leaders 
and followers, is fast decreasing. Brigham Young 
himself says that fifteen out of every twenty of the 
original American Mormons have apostatized; and 
Apostle Smith says five out of six. 

Two or three of the party who called on us had 
fine faces, — such as you would meet in intellectual 
or business society in Boston or New York, — but the 
strength of most of them seemed to lie in narrowness, 
bigotry, obstinacy. They looked as if they had lived 
on the same farms as their fathers and grandfathers, 
and made no improvements; gone to the same 
church, and sat in the same pews, without cushions; 
borrowed the same weekly newspaper for forty years ; 
drove all their children to the West or the cities; 
and if they went to agricultural fairs, insisted on 
having their premiums in pure coin. 

When we came to return their call, and met at 
Brigham Young's office pretty nearly the same com- 
pany of prominent Mormons, there was a full hour's 
frank talk of the whole matter of polygamy. He 



238 OUR NEW WEST. 

had, just before we entered, been bothered by a man 
who could not keep his "women" straight, and either 
wanted a reinforcement of authority from head-quar- 
ters, or Hberty to take an additional wife by way of 
equalizing the contending forces ; and it was not long 
after we were seated ere he blurted out the blunt 
question to Mr. Colfax — " Well, now you have con- 
quered the South and abolished slavery, what are 
you going to do with us and our polygamy?" With 
his usual tact, Mr Colfax replied that he had no au- 
thority to speak for the government; but for himself, 
if he might be permitted to make the suggestion, he 
had hoped the prophets of the church would have a 
new revelation on the subject, which should put a 
stop to the practice of polygamy. He added further 
that, as the people of Missouri and Maryland, without 
waiting for the action of the general government 
against slavery, themselves believing it to be wrong 
and an impediment to their prosperity, had taken 
measures to abolish it, so he hoped the people of the 
Mormon church would see that polygamy was a hin- 
drance and not a help, and move for its abandon- 
ment. Mr. Young responded quickly and frankly, 
and apparently as much to the surprise of his friends 
as to our own, that he should readily welcome such a 
revelation; that polygamy was not in the original 
book of the Mormons; that it was not an essential 
practice in the church, but only a privilege and a 
duty, under special command of God; that he knew 
it had been abused; that people had entered into 
polygamy who ought not to have done so, and 
against his protestation and advice; and that wives 



THE BIBLE DOCTRINES APPLIED. 239 

and husbands, in polygamy, were constantly fretting 
him with their troubles. At the same time, he de- 
fended the practice as having biblical authority, and 
as having, within proper limits, a sound, moral and 
philosophical reason and propriety. 

The discussion, thus opened, grew general and 
sharp, though ever good-natured. Mr. Young was 
asked how he got over the fact that the two sexes 
were about equally divided all over the world, and 
that if some men had two, five, or twenty wives, 
others would have to go without altogether. His 
reply was that there was always a considerable pro- 
portion of the men who would never marry, who were 
old bachelors from choice. But, retorted one, are 
there any more of such than of women who choose to 
be old maids ? Oh yes, said he, most ungallantly ; 
there is not one woman in a million who will not 
marry if she gets a chance ! Mr. G. Q. Cannon, an 
Englishman, and probably the most learned of tho 
Apostles, strongly pressed the biblical usage and au- 
thority for many wives, as above all laws and consti- 
tutions, but was asked as to the effect of the same 
usage and authority for human sacrifice, — would you, 
for instance, if commanded by God, ofier up your 
son or your enemy as a sacrifice, killing them ? Yes, 
he promptly replied. Then the civil law would lay 
its hands upon you and stop you, and would be justi- 
fied in doing so, was the apparently efiective answer. 

In the course of the discussion, Mr. Young asked, 
Suppose polygamy is given up, will not your govern- 
ment then demand more, — will it not war upon the 
Book of the Mormons, and attack our church organ- 
15 



240 OUR NEW WEST. 

ization? The reply was, emphatically, No, that it 
had no right, and could have no justification in doing 
so, and that we had no idea there would be any dis- 
position in that direction. The Mormons would then 
take rank and take their chances with the other 
Protestant denominations, — the Methodists, Baptists 
and Episcopalians, — and all would be left free to 
work and quarrel together on the same platform of 
equal rights. 

The talk, which was said to be the freest and 
frankest ever known on that subject in that pres- 
ence, ended pleasantly, but with the full expression, 
on the part of Mr. Colfax and his friends, of their 
hope that the polygamy question might be removed 
from existence, and thus all objection to the admis- 
sion of Utah as a State be taken away ; but that, until 
it was, no such admission was possible, and that the 
government could not continue to look indifferently 
upon the enlargement of so offensive a practice. And 
not only what Mr. Young said, but his whole manner 
left with us the impression that, if public opinion and 
the government united vigorously, but at the same 
time discreetly, to press the question, there would be 
found some way to acquiesce in the demand, and 
change the practice of the present fathers of the 
church. 

But this indication of a change of base was not well 
received by the Mormon leaders generally. They pro- 
tested against it, and very soon after we left, it was 
disowned or explained away, and polygamy took a 
fresh start. There has seemed, indeed, to be an effort 
to extend its complications and influences, and get 



BEIGHAM YOUNG ON SLAYERT ET AL. 241 

everybody into it of any character or power in tlie 
church or in society. When we were there, it was 
estimated that not more than one in six or eight of 
the men had embraced the practice ; but since, it has 
increased from fifty to one hundred per cent., and one 
in three or four of the men have more than one wife 
each. So the evil has grown to formidable propor- 
tions, and its eradication, even its limitation, seems 
much harder to compass than it did in 1865. 

Our afternoon's talk with Young and his associates 
included the proper way of treating the leading rebels 
and the merits of slavery in the abstract. He boldly 
espoused slavery jper se as established by Divine 
authority, like polygamy, but denounced the chattel 
system of the South ; and he opposed the hanging of 
any of the rebel chiefs as an unwise and aggravating 
policy. Now that peace is established, let all be par- 
doned, he said; but early in or during the war, he 
would have disposed of the rebel chiefs that fell into 
the hands of the government without mercy or hesi- 
tation. Had he been President when Mason and 
Slidell were captured, he would have speedily put 
them " wliei^e iJiey never would peejpl' and negotiated 
with England afterwards. As he said this, the thin 
lip shortened and the lower jaw worked, most dia- 
bolicallj^; and I felt sure he could be as good as 
his word, and no longer doubted where the inspira- 
tion for the Mountain Meadow massacres, the slaugh- 
ter of the recusant Josephites, or the various assas- 
sinations by the " Danites " of individual rebels from 
the church or uncompromising Gentiles, came from. 
Young thoroughly believes in punishing his enemies 



242 OUR NEW WEST. 

with fire and sword, and all in the name of the Lord 
his God. He is a resolute and literal Old Testament 
Christian in theory and practice, — thus far at least. 

On both Sabbaths we attended the Mormon religious 
services in the Church square. Meetings are held 
every Sunday, also, and on some week-day nights, in 
the church edifices in each of the twenty wards of 
the city, where the local bishops and elders drill the 
people in all the duties of life, instructing them with 
a plainness and with an autocratic authority as to 
their entire line of thinking and acting, that any 
other Protestant people or even any American Catho- 
lics would resent with indignation. But their igno- 
rant, fanatical followers seem to take it all as law and 
gospel, and are under such strict surveillance and au- 
thority that most of them would not even dare to 
disobey or protest. At the Tabernacle building, the 
gathering is from the whole city, amounting com- 
monly to several thousands, and the services are con- 
ducted by some of the Apostles. The congregations 
are naturally not of a very high grade, either of phys- 
ical beauty or mental capacity, — they were as dread- 
fully commonplace as you can imagine the refuse of 
the English factory towns, with a sprinkling of the 
peasantries of Germany, Finland, Sweden, Scotland, 
Norway, even Iceland, would be. Yet they exhibited 
improvement over their probable former life in tidi- 
ness of dress and better living. But the small nar- 
row heads told of limited brains and shallow thought. 
The handsome girls were few ; the fine-looking women 
even fewer; intelligent, strong-headed men were more 
numerous ; but the great mass, alike in size, looks and 



THE MORMOIS" RELIGIOUS EXERCISES. 243 

dress, were below the poorest, hardest-working and 
most ignorant classes of our eastern large towns. 

The gatherings and the services, both in speaking 
and singing, reminded me of the Methodist camp- 
meetings of fifteen or twenty years ago. The sing- 
ing, as on the latter occasions, was the best part of 
the exercises, simple, sweet, and fervent. "Daugh- 
ters of Zion," as sung by the large choir one Sunday 
morning, was prayer, sermon, song and all. The 
preacher that day was Apostle Richards, but beyond 
setting forth the superiority of the Mormon church 
system, through its presidents, councils, bishops, elders 
and seventies, for the work made incumbent upon 
Christians, and claiming that its preachers were in- 
spired like those of old, his discourse was a rambling, 
unimpressive exhortation, such as you may have 
heard from a tonguey deacon in any country Baptist 
or Methodist meeting-house of the last generation. 
The Bible, both Old and New Testaments, is used 
with the same authority as by all Protestants; the 
Mormon Scriptures are simply new and added books, 
confirming and supplementing the teachings of the 
original Scriptures. The rite of the sacrament is ad- 
ministered every Sunday, water being used instead 
of wine, and the distribution proceeding among the 
whole congregation, men, women and children, and 
numbering from three to five thousand, while the 
singing and the preaching are in progress. The 
prayers are few and simple, undistinguishable, except 
in these characteristics, from those heard in all Prot- 
estant churches, and the congregation all join in the 
Amen. 



244 OUR NEW WEST. 

The next Sunday, especially for our edification, 
Brigham Young himself preached -, but he was very 
unsatisfactory and disappointing in his effort. There 
was every incentive for him to do his best ; he had an 
audience of four or five thousands spread out under the 
" Bowery/' adjoining the Tabernacle, where the summer 
meetings are held ; before him was Mr. Colfax, who had 
asked him to preach upon the distinctive Mormon doc- 
trines; around him were all his elders and bishops, in 
unusual numbers; and he was fresh from the exciting 
discussion of the day before on the subject of polyga- 
my. But his address lacked logic, lacked effect, lacked 
wholly magnetism or impressiveness. It was a curi- 
ous medley of scriptural exposition and exhortation, 
bold and bare statement, coarse denunciation and vul- 
gar allusion, cheap rant and poor cant. So far as his 
statement of Mormon belief went, it amounted to this : 
that God was a human, material person, with like flesh 
and blood and passions to ourselves, only perfect in all 
things ; that he begot his son Jesus in the same way 
that children are begotten now; that Jesus and the 
Father looked alike and were alike, distinguishable 
only by the former being older; that our resurrection 
would be material, and we should live in heaven with 
the same bodies and the same passions as on earth ; 
that Mormonism was the most perfect and true re- 
ligion ; that those Christians who were not Mormons 
would not necessarily go to hell and be burned by 
living fire and tortured by ugly devils, but that they 
would not occupy so high places in heaven as the 
Latter Day Saints ; that polygamy was the habit of 
all the children of God in the earlier ages, and was 



BRIGHAM young's SERMON. 245 

first abolished by the Goths and Yandals who con- 
quered and reconstructed Rome ; that Martin Luther 
approved of it in a single case at least ; that a clergy- 
man of the Church of England once married a man 
to a second wife while his first wife was living ; and 
that in England now, if a man wanted to change his 
wife, he had only to offer her at auction and knock 
her off for a pot of beer or a shilling, and marry an- 
other. A good deal of boasting of the success of the 
Mormons, their temperance, frugality and honesty, 
and a sharp denunciation of the "few stinking law- 
yers who lived down in Whiskey street, and for five 
dollars w^ould attempt to make a lie into a truth," 
were the only other noticeable features of this dis- 
course of the President of the Church of the Latter 
Day Saints. It was a very material interpretation of 
the statements and truths of Scripture, very illogic- 
ally and roughly rendered ; and calculated only to 
influence a cheap and vulgar audience. Brigham 
Young may be a shrewd business man, an able or- 
ganizer of labor, a bold, brave person in dealing with 
the practicalities of life, — he must, indeed, be all of 
these, for we see the evidences all around this city 
and country; but he is in no sense an impressive or 
efiective preacher, judged by any standards that I 
have been accustomed to. 

A good many Mormon sermons have been reported 
and published, some by themselves, others by Gentile 
listeners. Their language in many instances is shock- 
ingly blasphemous ; in others, where rebellious or 
vain or wicked w^omen are denounced, or the young 
girls are instructed in their duty to become con- 



246 " OUE NEW WEST. 

cubines and bear children as soon as the laws of 
nature will permit; it is positively filthy and disgust- 
ing, such as would not be tolerated elsewhere out of 
the vilest dens of great cities. As specimens, not of 
such sermons, but of the more decent sort, I quote a 
few independent sentences, — they are from Brigham 
Young, and Apostles Smith and Pratt : — 

"WBen a man comes rigbt out like an independent devil, and says 

*D Mormonism and all the Mormons,' and is off with himself to 

California, I say he is a gentleman by the side of a nasty, sneaking 
apostate, who is opposed to nothing but Christianity. But now, you 
Gladdenites [a band of recusant Mormons,] keep your tongues still, 
lest sudden destruction come upon you. I say, rather than that apos- 
tates should flourish here, I will unsheath my bowie-knife and conquer 
or die." 

"There are sins that men commit for which they cannot receive for- 
giveness in this world, or in that which is to come; and if they had 
their eyes open to see their true condition they would be perfectly will- 
ing to have their blood spilt, that the smoke thereof might ascend to 
heaven as an offering for their sins, and the incense would atone for 
their sins. I know when you hear my brethren telling about cutting 
people off from the earth that you consider it strong doctrine ; hut it is 
to save them, not to destroy them. It is true that the blood of the Son 
of God was shed for sins through the fall and those committed by men, 
yet men can commit sin which it never can remit. There are sins which 
can be atoned for by an offering upon an altar as in ancient days, but 
there are also sins which the blood of a lamb, of a calf, or of turtle 
doves cannot remit; hut they must he atoned for hy the hlood of the man" 

"No wonder that you grope in the dark; that you are subject to 
doubts and fears concerning your eternal salvation. The law of celes- 
tial marriage is right, but you will not obey it, and those of you who 
do not accept the Gospel of Christ can expect nothing but darkness. 
There is no inducement for any man to become a Latter Day Saint 
unless he accepts the Spirit of God in his heart and obeys His teachings." 

"If an elder has borrowed from you, and you find he is going to 
apostatize, then you may tighten the screws upon him; but if he is 



MR. COLFAX 11^ THE MOKMOI^ PULPIT. 247 

willing to preach the Gospel without purse or scrip, it is none of your 
business what he has done with the money he has borrowed from you. 
If you murmur against that elder, it will prove your damnation! No 
man need judge me. You know nothing about it, whether I am sent 
or not; furthermore it is none of your business, only to listen with open 
ears to what is taught you and serve God with an undivided heart." 

"How was it with Mary and Martha, and other women who followed 
Jesus? In old times, and it is common in this day, the women, even 
Sarah, called their husbands lord. The word is tantamount to husband 
in some languages. Master, lord and husband are synonymous. When 
Mary came to the sepulchre, Jesus said unto her, Mary! She said 
unto him, Rabboni, which is to say master. Is there not here mani- 
fested the affection of a wife? These words were the kindred ties and 
sympathies that are common between husband and wife." The same 
discourse declared that Jesus was himself the bridegroom at the mar- 
riage in Cana of Galilee, and that Mary and Martha were both his 
wives ! 

These are fair illustrations of the intellectual and 
religious husks on which these poor people are fed 
from Sunday to Sunday. Perhaps they are above 
the average in propriety and piety of expression ; but 
they show, better than any characterization of mine, 
the spirit both of priests and people ; how brutal is 
that of the one, how debased that of the other. 

Mr. Colfax's presence in their pulpit was certainly 
a novelty for the Mormon audience. On the Sunday 
evening after Brigham Young's sermon, he repeated 
there, by request, his eulogy on the life and principles 
of President Lincoln, then a fresh theme everywhere 
in our broad land. The audience was swollen to five 
or six thousands; and, dull of comprehension and 
fanatically devoted to Young and his Apostles as most 
of them were, they could not have failed to feel that 
they were listening to a higher order of eloquence 



248 OUR NEW WEST. 

and patriotism, — to nobler thoughts in nobler garb, — 
than those which were usually doled out to them. At 
least they listened with rapt attention and apparent 
sympathy; and it is rare that they hear so lofty and 
loyal sentiments from that platform. The Mormon 
preachers never allude to the national government 
but to criticise, belittle and abuse. 

But of polygamy in practice ? How does it oper- 
ate? — what are its results? — what its prospects? 
Most obviously, first, there are plenty of children. 
The houses and yards and streets swarm with them. 
The Divine injunction to increase and multiply, that 
they may people the earth, is held in great respect 
by the Mormon patriarchs. They quote it often in 
defense to Gentile doubters, or as injunction to hesi- 
tating believers, men or women, who fear to launch 
away on the sea of polygamy. The care of the chil- 
dren is obviously not of the best; it would not be 
strange if many of them were not wise enough to 
know their own fathers; but this is not the worst 
form of their ignorance. There are fathers who are 
loyal, there are mothers who are tender, of course, even 
the more tender because of their own sufferings, and 
the church exhorts and enforces a certain degree of 
care and instruction; but the general life of the 
Mormons is simple, material and hard; there is not 
only little unity in polygamous families, but a good 
deal of discord, and the children cannot avoid sufier- 
ing, not only from neglect and from the general de- 
basement and materiality of life, but sharply and 
especially from the inevitable revenge that out- 
raged nature, unelevated and undisciplined by cul- 



HOW THE WIYES BEAR IT. 249 

ture, is forever certain to wreak on those nearest 
and even dearest to it. 

Their religion is of course the great reason for 
polygamy; it is the excuse of the men; it is the rec- 
onciliation of the women. Many, perhaps most of 
both sexes really believe in it as a religious duty; 
but I find this part of their religion is much easier 
and more acceptable to the men than to the women. 
The former go to the sacrifice with a certain brutal 
joy; the latter with a hard, sad resignation. When 
men talk with men, as men, the truth cannot help 
but crop out as to such a matter as this; and the 
chances are two to one, that before you get through 
discussing polygamy with a many-wived Mormon, he 
will commend it, with a lustful leer, to the master- 
passion of the sex. But with the women, ignorant 
and degraded as most of them are, the universal testi- 
mony of all but their husbands is, that it is a grievous 
sorrow and burden; only cheerfully submitted to and 
embraced under a religious fanaticism and self-abne- 
gation rare to behold, and possible only to women. 
They are taught to believe, and many of them really 
do believe, that through and by it they secure a 
higher and more glorious reward in the future world. 
"Lord Jesus has laid a heavy trial upon me," said one 
poor, sweet woman, "but I mean to bear it for His 
sake, and for the glory He will grant me in His king- 
dom." This is the common wail, the common solace. 

In some cases the common wives live harmoniously 
and lovingly together ; oftener, it would seem, they 
have separate parts of the same house, or even sep- 
arate houses. The first wife is generally the recog- 



250 OUH NEW WEST. 

nized one of general, especially of Gentile society, 
and frequently assumes contempt for the others, re- 
garding them as concubines, and not wives. But it 
is a dreadful state of society to any one of fine feel- 
ings and true instincts ; it robs married life of all its 
sweet sentiment and companionship ; and while it 
degrades woman, it brutalizes man, teaching him to 
despise and domineer over his wives, over all women. 
It breeds jealousy, distrust, and tempts to infidelity ; 
but the police system of the church and the commu- 
nity is so strict and constant that it is claimed and 
believed the latter vice is very rare. As I have said, 
we had little direct communication with the women of 
the Saints 3 but their testimony came to us in a hun- 
dred ways, sad, tragic, heart-rending. One woman, i 
an educated, handsome person, as yet a single wife, 
said, with bated breath and almost hissing fury, to 
one of our party, in some aside discussion of the sub- 
ject, — "Polygamy is tolerable enough for the men, 
but it is hell for the women." Poor creature, she has 
now bitterly realized in her own what she then saw 
in other lives, for her brute of a husband has since 
had "sealed" to himself, not only for eternity but for 
earth, two or three young and fresh girls. 

The only half wives we saw intimately were two 
young Englishwomen, of nearly equal years; they 
appeared together in the parlor and in public with 
their husband, and dressed alike ; but they had the 
same quiet, subdued, half-sad air that characterized 
all the Mormon women, young and old, that I saw 
in public or private. There is certainly none of that 
"loudness" about the Mormon ladies that an East- 



ILLUSTRATIONS OF POLYGAMY. 251 

ern man cannot help observing in the manners of our 
Western women generally. And I hardly think the 
difference is to be attributed to the superior refine- 
ment and culture of the sisters of the Salt Lake 
Basin ; it rather and really is the sign and mark of 
their servitudCj their debasement. Indeed, we have 
the frequent testimony of the husbands, and even of 
Briorham Youno; himself, to the irreconciliation of 
wives with the polygamous state. Said Young in a 
public sermon : ^' It frequently happens that women 
will say they are unhappy; and husbands testify that 
* my wife, though a most excellent woman, has not 
seen a happy day since I took my second wife.'" 
And then he proceeded to scold them for their re- 
bellious feelings, and to enjoin upon them the Divine 
duty of sweet submission ! 

The first generation of Mormon-born girls and boys 
is just now coming to maturity. Despite their educa- 
tion they are not very eager to embrace the Divine 
institution. But it is hard to escape its meshes. 
Some of the girls have bolted and married Gentiles ; 
but more have been gobbled up as fresh victims for 
the middle-aged and old men of the church. The 
elders preach submission to this to the girls with sanc- 
timonious solemnity as a Christian duty, and then 
make haste to take advantage of the conviction they 
have gained. Two unmarried Mormon young men 
stated the case very humanly when they said : " This 
polygamy would be all right, only the women, you 
know, ^pull hair' so like darnation!" 

Polygamy introduces many curious cross-relation- 
ships, and intertwines the branches of the genealogical 



252 OUR NEW WEST. 

tree in a manner greatly to puzzle a mathematician, 
as well as to disgust the decent-minded. The marry- 
ing of two or more sisters is very common; one young 
Mormon merchant in Salt Lake City has three sisters 
for his three wives. There are several cases of men 
marrying both mother (widow) and her daughter or 
daughters ; taking the " old woman " for the sake of 
getting the young ones ; but having children by all. 
Please to cipher out for yourselves how this mixes 
things. Consider^ too, how these children of one 
father and many mothers, — the latter often blood 
relations, — are likely to become crossed again in new 
marriages, in the second or third, if not the first, 
generations, under the operations of this polygamous 
practice -, and it is safe to predict that a few genera- 
tions of such social practices will breed a physical, 
moral and mental debasement of the people most 
frightful to contemplate. Already, indeed, are such 
indications apparent, foreshadowing the sure and ter- 
rible realization. 

In many cases, the Mormon wives not only support 
themselves and their children, but help support their 
husbands. Thus a clerk or other man, with similar 
limited income, who has yielded to the fascinations 
and desires of three or four women, and married them 
all, makes his home with number one, perhaps, and 
the rest live apart, each by herself, taking in sewing 
or washing, or engaging in other employment, to 
keep up her establishment and be no charge to her 
husband. He comes around, once in a while, to 
make her a visit, and then she sets out an extra 
table and spends all her accumulated earnings to 



BRIGHAM YOUNG AND HIS WIYES. 253 

make him as comfortable and herself as charming 
as possible, so that her fraction of the dear sainted 
man may be multiplied as much as may be. Thus 
the fellow, if he is lazy and has turned his piety to 
the good account of getting smart wives, may really 
board around continually, and live in clover, at no 
personal expense but his own clothing. Is not this a 
divine institution, indeed ! 

Brigham Young's wives are numberless; at least 
no one seems to know how many he has ; and he has 
himself confessed to forgetfulness in the matter. The 
probability is he has from sixteen to twenty genuine 
or complete wives, and about as many more women 
"sealed" to him for heavenly association and glory. 
The latter are mostly pious old ladies, eager for high 
seats in the Mormon heaven, and knowing no surer 
way to get there than to be joined on to Brigham's 
angelic procession. Some of these sealed wives of 
his are the earthly wives of other men; but, lacking 
faith in their husbands' heavenly glory, seek to make 
a sure thing of it for the future by the grace of gra- 
cious Brigham- Down East, you know, many a hus- 
band calculates on stealing into heaven under the 
pious petticoats of his better wife ; here the thing is 
reversed, and women go to heaven because their 
husbands take them along;. The Mormon reho;ion is 
an excellent institution for maintaining; masculine 
authority in the family ; and the greatness of a true 
Mormon is measured, indeed, by the number of wives 
he can keep in sweet and loving and especially obe- 
dient subjugation. Such a man can have as many 
wives as he wants. But President Young objects 



254 OUR NEW WEST. 

to multiplying wives for men who have not this rare 
domestic gift 3 and he finds great annoyance in being 
teased by men, unfit to drive double teams of women, 
to let them try their hands. 

Brigham Young has in all some sixty or seventy 
children; the younger ones, as seen in his school, to 
which we were admitted, looked sprightly and bright 
and handsome , and some of his grown up daughters 
are comely and clever; but his older sons give no 
marked sign of then* father's smartness. Brigham, 
Jr., and Joseph A. have set up as polygamists and 
prophets for themselves. They are big and burly 
fellows; Brigham has shown some business capacity, 
and has been a good deal of the time for years in 
England and New York, forwarding the emigration 
of the church; but the accomplishments of the other 
are summed up as smoking good cigars, drinking 
good liquors, playing poker, licking his wives, and 
preaching the Mormon Gospel. It cannot be said, 
surely, that he does not practice what he preaches. 

The grand Head of the Church manages his house- 
hold on strict business principles. A son-in-law acts 
as commissary; the wives have nothing to do with 
the table or its supply; and whenever they want 
new clothes or pocket-money, they must go to this 
chief of staff or head of the family bureau. He does 
not allow any of them to come begging or whining 
about him for any cause, — when he wants one, he 
sends for her. And the rule for children, "Speak 
when you are spoken to, and not otherwise," is tho 
law of his domestic economy. Considering his oppor. 
tunities, he seems to have made a rather sorry selec^ 



THE GRAND HAEEM. 255 

tion of women on the score of beauty. The oldest 
or first is a matronly-looking old lady^ serene and 
sober ; the youngest and present pet, who was ob- 
tained, they say, after much seeking, is comely but 
common-looking, despite the extra millinery in which 
she alone of the entire family indulges ; while all be- 
tween are very "or'nary" indeed. Handsome women 
and girls, in fact, are scarce among the Mormons of 
Salt Lake, — the fewer Gentiles can show many 
more of them. Why is this ? Is beauty more es- 
thetic and ascetic? Or, good-looking women being 
supposed to have more chances for matrimony than 
their plainer sisters, do they all insist upon having 
the whole of one man, and leave the Mormon hus- 
bands to those whose choice is like Hobson's ? 

The following list and description of Brigham 
Young's family, made up from various sources by 
Mr. Coffin of Boston, who visited Salt Lake City in 
1868, agree substantially with the information we 
obtained concerning them during our earlier visit. 
The extract will help my readers to a personal apjDre- 
ciation of the fact and operation of polygamy ; but 
it is an institution, after all, whose realities neither 
description nor imagination can fairly set before the 
mind : — 

"This is the harem. A covered passage leads from the ground floor 
to another building East in which is the general business office of 
Brigham Young, and from which telegraph wires run to every hamlet 
in the Territory. Another passage leads to the private office of Brigham 
— back of which is his private bedroom, where his concubines wait 
upon him, — Amelia to-day, Emeline to-morrow, Lucy the day after. 

" Brigham's lawfully wedded wife was Mary Ann Angell, — a native 
of New York, — the mother of five children, — Joseph, or " Joe " as he 
16 



256 OUR NEW WEST. 

is called at Salt Lake, Brigliam A., John, Alice and Luna. She 
married the prophet while he was a young man, before he was a 
prophet, and with him accepted the revelations of Joseph Smith. She 
lives in a large stone building in the rear of the harem. Brigham does 
not often visit her now. 

" His first concubine is Lucy Decker. She is the lawful wife of Isaac 
Seely, mother of two children ; but Brigham could make her a queen 
in heaven, and so, bidding good-by to Isaac, she became first concu- 
bine, and has added eight children to the prophet's household. 

** Her younger sister, Clara Decker, also aspired to be a heavenly 
queen, and became his second concubine, and is the mother of four 
children. 

" The third is Harriet Cook, mother of one turbulent boy, who does 
pretty much as he pleases, as does the mother. When in her tan- 
trums she does not hesitate to send Brigham to the realm of evil spirits. 

" Lucy Bigelow is said to be one of the most lady-like of all the 
concubines. Mrs. Waite, wife of one of the United States Judges of 
the Territory, who saw all of the ladies of the harem, describes her as 
of middling stature, dark brown hair, blue eyes, aquiline nose and a 
pretty mouth. She is pleasant and affable. 

"Miss Twiss has sandy hair, round features, blue eyes, low fore- 
head, freckled face, but as she has no children, is not of much account 
in the eyes of the prophet. She looks after his clothes, sews buttons 
on his shirts, and acts the part of a housewife. 

*' Martha Bowker is another of the same sort, quiet, neat in dress, 
childless, and therefore of little account. 

" Harriet Barney, like Lucy Decker, left her husband and three chil- 
dren to become a concubine that she might have exaltation in Heaven, 
but has not been honored in the harem, not having added any children 
to the household. 

"Eliza Burgess is the only English woman in the harem, small of 
stature, black eyes, quick-tempered, but mother of several children. 

" Ellen Rockwood, daughter of the jail-keeper, is another of the 
unfortunate women — not having had children. 

" Mrs. Hampton, whose first husband died at Nauvoo, afterward 
married a man by the name of Cole, who left her at Nauvoo and went 
to California. Brigham, hearing of his departure, sent for the wife, 
who obeyed the summons and became a concubine, lived in the harem 



LIST OF beigham's wiyes. 257 

eight years, then was cast out by Brigham. She now lives at Ogden 
City with her son, Nephi Hampton. 

" Mary Bigelow is another castaway. She lived in the harem several 
years, but Brigham became tired of her and sent her away. 

" Margaret Pierce is another who, not having added to the glory of 
the prophet by being a mother, is of little account, though still in the 
harem. 

"Emeline Free, as described by Mrs. Waite, is the ''light of the 
harem," tall, graceful, mild, violet eyes, fair hair, inclined to curl. 
She was a lively young lady, and Brigham fell in love with her. Her 
father and mother were opposed to polygamy, but Emeline had am- 
bitious projects, accepted his proposal and became the favorite of the 
harem. The favor shown her brought on a row. The other concu- 
bines carried this jealousy to such a pitch that the prophet had a private 
passage constructed from his bed-room to Emeline's room, so that his 
visits to her and her's to him could be made without observation. She 
has contributed greatly to his glory in the future world by presenting 
him with eight children in this. 

*' The poetess of the church is Eliza Snow, said to be quite intellectual. 
In one of her poems published in Brigham's paper, the ' Deseret News,' 
she thus exalts the Mormon religion; 

* We have the ancient order, 

To us by prophets given : 
And here we have the pattern 

As things exist in heaven.' 

" From which we are to understand that there are harems in heaven ! 
So the Turk believes. 

"Zina Huntington also writes poetry and acts as a sort of governess 
to the numerous children of the prophet. Zina came to Salt Lake with 
her lawfully wedded husband. Dr. Jacobs. Brigham liked her, sent 
the doctor on a missionary tour to England, took his wife into the harem, 
and became the spiritual father of her children, — made her his temporal 
concubine that he might also exalt her to be a queen in heaven ! The 
doctor returned from his mission, apostatized, and went to California, 
where he now resides. 

"Amelia Partridge has added four children to the prophet's house- 
hold. She is said to be of a sweet disposition and is not jealous when 
the prophet turns his attentions to the other concubines. 



258 OUR NEW WEST. 

"Mrs. Augusta Cobb was formerly a Bostonian, became converted 
to Mormonism eigbteen years ago, left ber bome and accepted a position 
in tbe barem. 

" Mrs. Smitb, a devout Mormon, wisbed to be sealed to Brigbam for 
eternity, but tbe propbet did not care to make ber a beavenly queen. 
He sealed ber to Josepb Smitb for eternity and to bimself for time. 

**One 'poor unfortunate,' Clara Cbase, became a maniac, and bas 
gone to wbere tbe wicked cease from troubling. 

** Amelia Folsom, a native of Portsmoutb, N. H., is tbe mistress of 
tbe barem. Sbe entered it on tbe 29tb of January, 1863. Sbe was 
tben about nineteen and tbe prophet sixty-tbree. Sbe bas tbings 
pretty mucb ber own way, — private box at tbe tbeater, carriage of ber 
own, silks, satins, a piano, parlor elegantly furnisbed. If tbe propbet 
sligbts ber, sbe pays bim in bis own coin." 



XIII. 

THE FUTUEE OF THE MOEMONS. 

What of the Church and Polygamy? — How the Problem will be 
Solved — No Fit Successor for Brigham Young — The Past Neglect 
and Present Duty of the Government — The Division of the Territory 
— How the Soldiers attack Polygamy — The Order of Danite Assas- 
sins, and their Bloody Work— The Mountain Meadow Massacre — The 
Rebellious Morrisites and Josephites — Summing up of Observations 
in Utah and our Conclusions — Our Stage Driver " The Coming Man." 

What will become of the Mormons ? Is polygamy 
to be fastened upon our social institutions, and are 
we to have a State of polygamists ? If not, how is 
the evil to be cured ? These are questions that every 
visitor in Utah, every student of the anomaly there 
so flourishing, asks of himself and of his neighbor. 
They seemed easier of answer in 1865 than now in 
1869, for both polygamy and the power of the church 
that backs it have greatly increased since then ; and 
yet I cannot but think we are nearer the solution of 
the problem, — not only as to time, but in means, — 
now than then. The whole spirit of the social life, the 
religion, the political government in operation there, is 
in such antagonism to everything American, to every- 
thing modern, that it must give way. It is Romish, 



260 OUR NEW WEST. 

barbaric, monarchical; it crushes and degrades the 
individual, to uphold a system as tyrannical over per- 
sons and property as that of any Czar ever was, as 
supreme over the mind as that of any Pope, as en- 
slaving to woman as that of any Sultan. The Rail- 
road now crosses the Territory; it will soon pass up 
and down through it ; and though the Apostles say 
they are not afraid of its influences, either upon the 
Mormon church or its "peculiar institution," and 
Brigham Young declares that his "must, indeed, be 

a poor religion, if it cannot stand one railroad," he 

and they will find out that it cannot and will not. 
Thousands of Gentiles will come in now, where tens 
came before; the railroads must have great work 
and supply shops at important points in the Terri- 
tory ; and they will bring a power of numbers and of 
influence, that cannot be met by the social, business 
or murdering persecutions, that have heretofore kept 
all foreign and resisting elements timid and weak. 

What precise form the revolution will take, — where 
the wedge will be entered that shall split this rotten 
trunk to pieces, no one can wisely predict. The gov- 
ernment cannot longer be So indifierent and neglect- 
ful of the situation here as it has been ; it must come 
here with authority and power to protect citizens who 
are not Mormons, and will not be subservient to them, 
who will try titles to property with them, who will 
claim the right to marry their superfluous wives, who 
will set up rival churches and schools and papers, and 
all the other enginery of freedom and revolution. The 
work maybe slow, — sapping the strength of the church 
by the processes of education, discussion and law, and 



NO SUCCESSOR TO BRIGHAM YOUNG. 261 

polygamy may fade away by degrees through the 
death of the old, and the absence of new disciples, 
— or it may come suddenly and sharply in a violent 
collision between the new settlers and the old, with 
the government taking the side of the former as the 
side of its long-neglected, long-outraged laws. But 
come it must and will. To doubt would be to ques- 
tion progress, to deny civilization, to outrage God. 

I can discover no successor to Brigham Young. 
He has men of ability, — men of fanaticism and cour- 
age, — around him; able instruments for his will; but 
I see no "coming man" for his place; no one who 
can stand alone in his shoes, who can command such 
obedience among followers, such fear among out- 
siders, such serene victory over himself Most of 
his wisest and ablest associates, men inspired with 
the traditions of the church, and inspiring the faith 
of its members, are all old like himself They and 
he must soon die ; and, if not before, then will enter 
in the elements of doubt and difference and disinte- 
gration, in response to the elements of change and 
revolution and re-creation that follow the banners of 
civilization and of democracy everywhere. No Mor- 
mon will admit this, perhaps ; but it is truth by a 
diviner sight than any that he possesses. Devout as 
a Mussulman, devoted as a Eomanist, zealous as a 
Methodist, there is a higher truth than he has mas- 
tered, — the truth of revolution in the interests of 
equality, of individuality, and of woman's independ- 
ence. These are against him; these will conquer him, 
pray he ever so sacredly, fight he ever so valiantly. 
Brigham Young, Louis Napoleon, the Sultan and the 



262 OUR NEW WEST. 

Pope are all doomed by the same law. Slavery 
went down under it, j)olygamy will follow. 

But the government should no longer hold a doubt- 
ful or divided position toward this great crime of the 
Mormon church. Declaring clearly both its want of 
power and disinclination to interfere at all with the 
church organization as such, or with the latter's influ- 
ence over its followers, assuring and guaranteeing 
to it all the liberty and freedom that other religious 
sects hold and enjoy, the government should still, 
as clearly and distinctly, declare, by all its action 
and all its representatives here, that this feature of 
polygamy, not properly or necessarily a part of the 
religion of the Mormons, is a crime by the common 
law of all civilization and by the statute law of the 
Nation, and that any cases of its extension will be 
prosecuted and punished as such. Now half or two- 
thirds the federal officers in the Territory are polyg- 
amists; and others bear no testimony against it. 
These should give way to men who, otherwise 
equally Mormons it may be, still are neither polyg- 
amists nor believers in the practice of polygamy. 
No employes or contractors of the government should 
be polygamists in theory or practice. 

Here the government should take its stand, calmly, 
quietly, but firmly, giving its moral support and 
countenance, and its physical support, if necessary for 
fair play, to the large class of Mormons who are not 
polygamists, to missionaries and preachers of all other 
sects, who choose to come here, and erect their 
standards and invite followers ; and to that growing 
public opinion, here and elsewhere, which is accumu- 



HOW THE PROBLEM MAT BE SOLVED. 263 

lating its inexorable force, against an institution which 
has not inaptly been termed a twin barbarism with 
slavery. There is no need and no danger of physical 
conflict growing up ; only a hot and unwise zeal and 
impatience on the part of the government represent- 
atives, and in the command of the troops stationed 
here, could precipitate that. There is a possibility 
still, as there was probability in 1865^ that, upon such 
a demonstration by the government, as these pages 
urge, the leaders of the church would receive new 
light on the subject themselves, — perhaps have a 
fresh revelation, and abandon the objectionable feat- 
ure in their polity. No matter if they did not, — it 
would soon, under the influences now rapidly aggre- 
gating, and thus reinforced by the government, aban- 
don them. 

In this way, all violent conflict would, I believe, 
be successfully avoided; and all this valuable popu- 
lation and its industries and wealth may be retained in 
place and to the Nation, without waste. Let the people 
continue to be Mormons, if they choose, so long as 
they are not polygamists. They may be ignorant 
and fanatical, and imposed upon and swindled even, 
by their church leaders ; but they are industrious, 
thriving, and more comfortable than, on the aver- 
age, they have ever been before in the homes from 
which they came hither; and there is no law against 
fanaticism and bigotry and religious charlatanry. All 
these evils of religious benightment are not original 
in Utah, and they will work out their own cure here, 
as they have done elsewhere in our land. We must 
have patience with the present, and possibly forgive- 



264 OUR NEW WEST. 

ness for supposed crimes in the past by the leaders, 
because we have heretofore failed to meet the issues 
promptly and clearly, and have shared, by our con- 
sent and protection to their authors, in the alleged 
wrongs. 

Though the Territory has abundant population for 
a State, there is and should be no disposition in Con- 
gress or the country to endow it with that organiza- 
tion, so long as its people continue to be so at variance 
with all the democratic principles of our nationality. 
It must be kept, at least, where the federal govern- 
ment can reach and govern it, so long as its local 
organization is such a pure religious autocracy, ruling 
in a manner defiant alike of the laws and constitution 
of the United States, and the first principles of a 
republican government. Not only is a free press and 
a free speech practically denied ; not only is justice 
driven out of the courts ; but the simplest rights of a 
man over his own property are outraged. Yfhen a 
Mormon dies, the church assumes control of his 
estate, — it goes practically into the common cofiers, 
and the widows and children, however numerous, get 
henceforth only what the church chooses to give 
them. The idea of dividing the Territory up among 
the adjoining Territories is not practicable now; un- 
der it, the Mormons, instead of being divided and 
conquered, would divide and conquer ; for, with their 
numbers and discipline, they could out-vote and out- 
manage three territories. The changes of population, 
by the opening of the Kailroad and the discovery of 
new mines in adjoining sections of Nevada, will soon 
suggest the practical manner of reforming the Mor- 



THE WOMEN FLEE FROM POLYGAMY. 265 

mens, — very likely reform tliem by their own operor 
tion, and without the government being more than a 
policeman on guard to keep the peace. 

The soldiers at Camp Douglas, near Salt Lake 
City, were, during our visit, illustrating one of the 
ways in which polygamy will fade away before the 
popular principle. Two companies, who went home 
to California in the fall of 1864, took about twenty- 
five wives with them, recruited from the Mormon 
flocks. There were in 1865 some fifty or more women 
in the cam23, who had fled thither from town for pro- 
tection, or been seduced away from unhappy homes 
and fractional husbands; and all or nearly all found 
new husbands among the soldiers. Only the week 
we were there, a man with three daughters, living in 
the city, applied to Colonel George for leave to move 
lip to the camp for a residence, in order, as he said, 
to save his children from polygamy, into which the 
bishops and elders of the church were urging them. 
The camp authorities tell many like stories; also of 
sadder applications, if possible, for relief from actual 
poverty and from persecution in town. The Mor- 
mons have no poor-house, and say they have no poor, 
permitting none by relieving all through work or gifts. 
But a late winter was so long and so severe, with wood 
at thirty and forty dollars a cord, that there was much 
real suffering, and the soldiers yielded to extensive 
demands upon their charity, that the church authori- 
ties had neglected to fulfill, or absolutely denied. 

We hear less of late than in past years of the order 
of the "Danites," a band of secret Mormon assassins, 
who, under the direction of Brigham Young, put out 



266 OUR NEW WEST. 

of the way any particularly threatening or provoking 
opponents of the church. But of their existence and 
diabolical operations there can be no doubt. In the 
fall of 1857 a Mormon sued Brigham Young for false 
imprisonment; the day before the suit came to court 
he was shot in his own house. In 1858, two men 
obtained a judgment of the court against a leading 
Danite, and both were shot in cold blood. About the 
same time, Mr. Babbitt, Secretary of the Territory, 
had a quarrel with Young, and was murdered. In 
1866, Mr. Beanfield of Austin, Nevada, a highly re- 
spectable gentleman, had some difficulty with the Mor- 
mons, and was shot. In October, the same year. Dr. 
Eobinson, Surgeon of the United States Army, who 
had taken possession of unoccupied land, was called 
from his house at night to visit a patient, and was 
shot. In August, 1867, three men, — Potter, Wilson 
and Walker, — who had given offense to the church, 
were arrested on the pretense of stealing a cow and 
put into jail. At midnight sixteen Avengers, dis- 
guised, broke open the jail and murdered all three. 
The United States Marshal arrested them, but the 
Mormon Sheriff permitted them to escape, without 
any effort to retain them ; and the "Deseret News," 
the organ of the church, published a threatening let- 
ter to Judge Titus and backed it up by editorials, 
warning the Chief Justice to leave the Territory, 
and menacing him with death if he remained! 

Some of these sharp and swift punishments for 
offending or resisting the Mormons have been on a 
larger scale. The Mountain Meadow massacre of a 
dozen years ago, in the southern part of the Terri- 



THE MOUNTAIN MEADOW MASSACRE. 267 

tory, is one of the most notable cases. Its history is as 
follows: — One of the Mormon missionaries, Parley P. 
Pratt, was in Southern California preaching, and made 
a convert of a married woman, whose husband was 
absent. She left home, joined herself to Pratt, and 
became his concubine. The husband determined to 
be revenged, followed them to Salt Lake, then to Ar- 
kansas, where Pratt was preaching, and took venge- 
ance by shooting him. Months passed on. One day 
a party of emigrants from the county in Arkansas in 
which the homicide was committed reached Salt Lake, 
on their way to Southern California. It was a party 
well to do in the world, — forty wagons and about one 
hundred and fifty persons. In one wagon was a piano. 
One emigrant, with his family, rode in a well built 
carriage. They purchased provisions of the Mormons 
and passed on, reached the green meadow among the 
mountains and stopped to recruit their stock before 
entering the desert. Several Mormon settlements 
were near by; some houses within sight. Suddenly 
they were attacked by Indians, or white men disguised 
as Indians. It was at daylight. The emigrants fought 
from behind their wagons, threw up a ditch and kept 
the assailants at bay. The fighting lasted a week. 
One morning a Mormon advanced, told them that if 
they would give up their arms, the Indians would not 
harm them. They complied with his request. Then 
began the massacre. All but seventeen children were 
killed, and the oldest of these was only six years old, 
— too young to give certain testimony, except that 
their fathers were shot down, their mothers and sis- 
ters outraged, and then had their brains beaten out 



268 OUR NEW WEST. 

by men, who, though wearing an Indian dress, could 
speak the English language. A few days after the 
massacre, the wagons, horses, carriages, and clothing of 
the murdered ones, were brought to Salt Lake and 
sold. Ten per cent, of the proceeds went into the 
treasury of the church. Brigham Young bought the 
carriage for his own use, and the piano is now owned 
by one of the leading Mormons. 

There have been two or three prominent apostasies 
from the church in the Territory during its history. 
The two most important were those of Joseph Morris 
in 1860, and of Joseph Smith, Jr., son of the original 
prophet, in 1863-5. Of the followers of Morris, some 
were killed and nearly all robbed by the Mormon 
leaders in Salt Lake City in 1862, under pretense of 
enforcing the confiscations of the church against them 
for their rebellious conduct; and those who held out 
against this assault and the continuous persecution of 
the church, some eighty families, moved off to Idaho 
Territory, and have made a settlement there. The 
disciples of Joseph Smith, Jr., or " Josephites," are 
scattered in Missouri and Iowa, number about fifteen 
hundred, and include several hundred who left Utah 
in 1864-5, under government protection, for fear of 
massacre by the instruments of Young. Smith is a 
man of sincerity and purity, but lacks the courage and 
the force to cope fairly with the combination under 
Brigham Young at Salt Lake City. His creed de- 
nounces Young and his followers as apostates from 
the true Mormon church, forbids polygamy, and pro- 
fesses loyalty to the government. The Josephites 
are thus reduced to a mere sect of Protestantism, as 



POLYGAMY THE DEGRADATION OF WOMAN. 269 

Mormonism would be in the overthrow of polygamy 
and the severance of its church government from 
State craft. 

All our experience and observation in Utah tended, 
however, to increase our appreciation of the value of 
its material progress and development to the nation ; 
to justify congratulations to the Mormons and to the 
country for the wealth they have created and the 
order, frugality, morality and industry that have been 
organized in this remote spot in our Continent; to 
excite wonder at the perfection and power of their 
church system, the extent of its ramifications, the 
sweep of its influence ; and to enlarge our respect for 
the personal sincerity and character of many of the 
leaders in the organization; — but also, on the other 
hand, to deepen our disgust at their polygamy, and 
strengthen our convictions of its barbaric and de- 
grading influences. They have tried it and practiced 
it under the most favorable circumstances, perhaps 
under the mildest form possible; but, now as before, 
here as elsewhere, it tends to and means only the 
degradation of woman. By it and under it, she be- 
comes simply the servant and serf, not the companion 
and equal of man; and the inevitable influence of 
this upon all society need not be depicted. 

And so we could not, and cannot yet, doubt that, 
sooner or later, before the influences of emigration, 
civilization and our democratic habits, an organiza- 
tion so aristocratic and autocratic as the Mormon 
church now is must modify its rule ; it must compete 
with other sects, and take its chance with them. And 
especially, that its most ^aristocratic and uncivilized 



270 OUR NEW WEST. 

incident or feature of plurality of wives must fall first 
and completely before contact with the rest of the 
world, — marshalled with mails, daily papers, railroads 
and telegraphs, — ciphering out the fact that the men 
and women of the world are about equally divided, and 
applying to the Mormon patriarchs the democratic 
principle of equal and exact justice. Nothing can 
save this feature of Mormonism but new flight and a 
more complete isolation. A kingdom in the sea, en- 
tirely its own, could only perpetuate it; and thither, 
even, commerce and democracy would ultimately fol- 
low it. The click of the telegraph and the roll of 
the overland stages were its unheeded death-rattle ; 
the whistle of the locomotive will speedily sound its 
requiem; and the pickax of the miner is already 
digging its grave. Squatter sovereignty must ere 
long settle the question, even if the government con- 
tinues to coquette with the offense and humor the 
offenders, as it has done. Our bachelor stage-driver 
out of Salt Lake, who said he expected to have a 
revelation soon to take one of the extra wives of a 
Mormon saint^ is a representative of the Coming Man. 
Let the Mormons look out for him ! 



XIY. 

THEOUGH THE DESERT BASIN BY STAGE. 

From the Rocky Mountains to the Sierra Nevadas by Stage— Through 
Central Utah and Nevada — Characteristics of the Country — A 
Fast Ride— The Alkali Deposits and the Dust— The Compensa- 
tions in Nature— Reese River Valley, and Austin, a Representative 
Mining Town— A Classical Retreat— Virginia City and Gold Hill— 
The Neighborhood of the Sierras— The Rich Valleys— Steamboat 
Springs— The Anomalies of the Great Basin— Why, Whence, What? 

Our summer stage-ride of 1865, through the cen- 
ter of the Great Interior Basin of the Continent,— 
six hundred miles from the shadows of the Rocky 
Mountains to the shadows of their twin, the Sierra 
Nevadas, — was an experience that the Railroad now 
denies the opportunity for repeating. Dreary as the 
passage is by the cars, many times more dreary was 
the journey across it by stage. The route of the 
former lies along its only river ; it is passed over in 
a single day; the path of the stage lay along its 
center, crossing many a range of mountains, often 
a dry ravine, rarely a feeble, sickly brook, and re- 
quired a week of day and night travel. 

The Salt Lake Yalley belongs to the Great Basin, 
is its proem, gem and sub-specimen. Passing out 
17 



274 OUR NEW WEST. 

of it, up the Jordan River to Utah Lake, and through 
the mountain range that stretches southward from 
Salt Lake, the stage road crossed sixty miles of 
almost pure sand, that even water could not seduce 
into verdure, and then entered upon the general 
characteristics of the Basin country, — a dry, vol- 
canic soil, absorbing all the water it could get, and 
hungrily begging for more, bearing the sage bush in 
profusion, and scantily the bunch grass, rarely an 
animal or bird, never a human being but such as the 
stage line necessitated, a succession of bare, brown, 
vacant hills and valleys, gradually rising from the 
Salt Lake country at four thousand feet above the 
sea-level to nine thousand feet in the center, and 
then as gradually falling away under the Sierra Ne- 
vada range to four thousand again. Mountain and 
plain are alike above dew point; rain is a rarity, — 
near neighbor to absolute stranger; and only an oc- 
casional range of the hills mounts so high as to hold its 
winter snows into the summer suns, and yield the 
summer streams that give, at rare intervals, sweet 
lines of green, affording forage for cattle and refresh- 
ment and rest for traveler. Springs are even more 
infrequent, but not altogether unknown, and water 
may sometimes, though very hardly, be got, when all 
else fails, by digging deep wells. Such streams as 
rise from springs or snow-banks in the mountains, be^ 
gin to shrink as they reach the plains, and end in 
salt lakes, or sink quietly into the famishing earth. 

But such a ride as the stage men gave us across 
this country ! They doubled the ordinary speed of 
the horses, and made for us the quickest trip on 



THE om:n"ippwEsent alkali dust. 275 

record. The stations for the stages were ten to 
fifteen miles apart; at every station fresh horses, 
ready harnessed, took the places of the old, with 
a delay of from two to four minutes only; every 
fifty miles a new driver took his place on the box; 
wherever meals were to be eaten, they were ready 
to serve on arrival; and so, with horses ever fresh 
and fat and gamey, — horses that would shine in 
Central Park and Fifth Avenue equipages, — with 
drivers, gentlemanly, intelligent and better dressed 
than their passengers, and a division superintendent, 
who had planned the ride and came along to see it 
executed, for each two hundred miles, — we were 
whirled over the rough mountains and through the 
dry and dusty plains of this uninhabited and unin- 
habitable region, as rapidly and as regularly as we 
could have been over macadamized roads amid a 
complete civilization. The speed rarely fell below 
eight miles an hour, and often ran up to twelve. 
But so wisely was all arranged, and so well executed, 
that not an animal suffered; to horses and men the 
ride seemed to be the work of every day, as indeed 
it was in everything but our higher rate of speed. 

But we were content with the single experience. 
The alkaU dust, dry with a season's sun, fine with 
the grinding of a season's stages and freight trains, 
was thick and constant and penetrating beyond ex- 
perience and comparison. It filled the air, — it was 
the air ; it covered our bodies, — it penetrated them ; 
it soared to Almighty attributes, and became omni- 
present, and finding its way into bags and trunks, 
begrimed all our clean clothes, and reduced every- 



276 OUR NEW WEST. 

thing as everybody to a common plane of dirt, with 
soda, soapy flavor to all. 

This alkali element in the western soil has yet 
received, as I can find, no intelligent scientific ex- 
planation. We met with it first on the Plains ; then 
again in the Bitter Creek desert country in the Moun- 
tains; and now, in still greater degree, in the valleys 
and peculiarly desert plains of the Great Basin region. 
In some spots it prevails to such an extent as to clean 
the ground of all, even the scantiest vegetation ; and 
wide, smooth, bare alkali plains stretch out before the 
eye sometimes for miles, and white in the distance like 
a snow-bank. In other places so strong is it that the 
earth when wet rises like bread under yeast. It taints 
the water everywhere, and sometimes so strongly that 
bread mixed with it needs no other "rising." Yet we 
found neither in Utah nor Nevada evidence of any 
general unhealthy efiect from its presence, as was 
reported farther east ; animals eat the grass and drink 
the water flavored with it; and though the dust 
chokes all pores and makes the nose and lips sore, the 
inconvenience and annoyance seem to be but tem- 
porary from even large doses of it. 

In this grand desert ride, the joltings of the rocks 
and the "chuck holes" of the road, to which the 
drivers in their rapid progress could give no heed, 
kept us in a somewhat perpetual and not altogether 
graceful motion. There was certainly small sleep to 
be enjoyed during this memorable ride of three days 
and nights; and though we made the best of it with 
joke and felicitation at each other's discomfort, there 
was none not glad when it was over. 



WHAT CAN" WE DO WITH IT? 277 

It is an interesting problem whether these un- 
promising valleys, gray and brown with an unnatural 
sunshine, can ever be subdued to the service o the 
population that the mineral wealth of these hills in- 
vites and will inevitably draw into them. For most 
of our journey, there was nothing in the soil itself 
that forbade valuable uses. It is made up of the 
wash and waste of the Rocky Mountains, and wher- 
ever even moderately watered is very productive. 
Some theorists contend that with the occupation and 
use of the country, rains will multiply; and the ob- 
servations of the Mormons give encouragement to 
this idea. Another theory is, that by plowing durino- 
the later rains of spring, and sowing during the long, 
dry summer rest, the smaller and hardy grains will 
sprout with the fall rains, strengthen in the winter, 
and quickly ripen in the early spring. Such treat- 
ment involves a year's fallow, as the harvest would 
be too late for another plowing the same spring. 
This culture is doubtless practicable, as it has been 
proven, in the high sage bush plains in California; 
but it would seem as if these alkaline valleys of the 
Great Interior Basin were too cold, and go dry too 
long, for like successful treatment. It is worthy in- 
telligent and persistent experiment, however; for I 
observe that wherever the sage bush can grow, other 
things can and will with the addition of water. 

Do not think such a country is altogether without 
beauty or interest for a traveler. Mountains are al- 
ways beautiful; and here they are ever in sight, 
wearing every variety of shape, and even in their 
hard and bare surfaces presenting many a fascination 



278 OUR NEW WEST. 

of fornij — running up into sharp peaks ; rising up and 
rounding out into innumerable fat mammillas, ex- 
quisitely shapen, and inviting possibly to auriferous 
feasts ; sloping down into faint foot-hills, and mingling 
with the plain to which they are all destined; and 
now and then offering the silvery streak of snow, 
that is the sign of water for man and the promise of 
grass for ox. Add to the mountains the clear, pure, 
rare atmosphere, bringing remote objects close, giving 
new size and distinctness to moon and stars, offering 
sunsets and sunrises of indescribable richness and 
reach of color, and accompanied with cloudless skies 
and a south wind, refreshing at all times, and cool and 
exhilarating ever in the afternoon and evening ; and 
you have large compensations even for the lack of 
vegetation and color in the landscape. There is a 
rich exhilaration, especially, in the fresh evening air, 
dry, clear and strengthening, that no eastern moun- 
tain or ocean breeze can rival. In looking out through 
it after sunset on the starry heavens, and taking in 
its subtle inspiration, one almost forgets alkali, and 
for the time does not remember flowers and grass 
and trees. 

Two-thirds the journey across the Basin, — half way 
through Nevada, — we came to Keese River Valley, 
and there, in the mining town of Austin, we struck 
the first wave of Pacific Coast life. Reese River is 
but a sluggish brook, that the shortest-legged man 
could step across at its widest, and yields itself up to 
the hot sands after greening a very narrow line in 
the broad plain through which it runs. And yet it is 
the largest and almost only stream that we met in 



AUSTIN AND ITS ATTRACTIONS. 279 

traveling westward from the Jordan which waters the 
valley of Salt Lake; and the two are four hundred 
miles apart ! 

Here, ^yo hundred miles west of San Francisco, 
and two hundred from the Sierra Nevadas, huddled in 
a narrow canyon with steep hill-sides, just out of the 
valley, was the most representative mining town we 
had yet seen. Beginning in 1863, Austin had in a 
year's time a population of six to eight thousand, fell 
away in 1865 to four thousand, and now probably has 
no more than three thousand. Its houses are built 
anywhere, everywhere, and then the streets get to 
them as best they can; one side of a house will be 
four stories, the other one or two, — such is the lay of 
the land; not a tree, not a flower, not a blade of 
green grass anywhere in town; but the boot-blacks 
and baths and barbers are of European standards; it 
has a first-class French restaurant and a daily news- 
paper; the handsomest woman, physically, I ever 
saw presided, with almost comic queenliness, over one 
of its lager beer saloons ; gambling went on openly, 
amid music, in the area of every "saloon" — miners 
risking to this chance at night the proceeds of the 
scarcely less doubtful chance of the day; while the 
generally cultivated and classical tone of the town 
may be inferred from this advertisement in the daily 
paper : — 

" Mammotli Lager Beer Saloon, in the basement, corner Main and 
Virginia streets, Austin, Nevada. Choice liquors, wines, lager beer 
and cigars, served by pretty girls, who understand their business and 
attend to it. Votaries of Bacchus, Gambrinus, Venus or Cupid can 
spend an evening agreeably at the Mammoth Saloon." 



280 OUR NEW WEST. 

All this appealed, of course, to our scholarly appe- 
tites, and we went early in search of so classical a 
bower of the senses. Kesult, — a cellar, whitewashed 
and sawdusted; two fiddles and a clarionet in harsh 
action in one corner- a bar of liquors glaring in an- 
other; while a fat, coarse Jew girl proved the sole 
representative and servant of all these proclaimed 
gods and goddesses. "We blushingly apologized, and 
retired with our faces to Mistress Venus, Cupid, etc., 
as guests retire from mortal monarchs, — lest our pock- 
ets should be picked; and concluded we should take 
our mythology out of the dictionaries hereafter. 

We stole a march by our rapid riding on Virginia 
City and Gold Hill, two hundred miles farther west 
than Austin, and got into town, had our bath, and 
were asleep in bed, when the patriotic citizens mar- 
shalled their procession, and were about to go out on 
the road, with brass band and welcoming speech, to 
give greeting to the distinguished visitors. We found 
in Virginia, the original " Washoe " of mining history, 
many contrasts to and improvements upon Austin. 
It is three or four years older; it puts its gambling 
behind an extra door; it is beginning to recognize 
the Sabbath, has many churches open, and closes part 
of its stores on that day; is exceedingly well built, 
in large proportion with solid brick stores and ware- 
houses; and though the fast and fascinating times of 
1862-63 are over, when it held from fifteen to twenty 
thousand people, and Broadway and Wall street were 
not more crowded than its streets, and there are to- 
kens that its great mines are nearly dug out, it still 
has the air of permanence and of profit, and contains 



VIRGINIA AND ITS NEIGHBOEING VALLEYS. 281 

a population of seven or eight thousand, besides the 
adjoining town or extension of Gold Hill, which has 
about three thousand more. 

The situation of Virginia is very picturesque; above 
the canyon or ravine, it is spread along the mountain 
side, like the roof of a house, about half way to the 
top. Directly above rises a noble peak, fifteen hun- 
dred feet higher than the town, itself about six thou- 
sand feet high; below stretches the foot-hill, bisected 
by the ravine; around on all sides, sister hills rise in 
varying hights, rich in roundness and other forms of 
beauty, but brown in barrenness, as if shorn for prize 
fight, and fading out into distant plain, with a sweet 
green spot to mark the rare presence of water and 
verdure. 

A few miles now bring us within the freshness of 
the Mountains, and the Desert is over and past. Ad- 
joining Virginia City and Gold Hill are fertile val- 
leys, in one of which the capital of the State, Car- 
son City, is located, feeding upon the overflow of the 
gold ores of the mines for reduction, and upon the 
agriculture that the neighboring market invites, and 
the surrounding meadows permit. Just here, in fact, 
in the valleys of the Truckee, the Washoe, and the 
Carson Rivers, coming down from the mountain, is 
the garden of the State. Before "Washoe" was, 
it was occupied by a few Mormon farmers, colonists 
from the central settlement at Salt Lake, the whole 
territory from the Eocky Mountains to the Sierras 
then being Utah. But now the Mormons are dis- 
placed by a more vigorous and varied population, 
prosperous with farming, with lumbering among the 



282 OUE NEW WEST. 

rich pines of the Sierras, and with quartz mills for 
reducing gold ores. 

A not unfrequent phenomenon of the Great Basin 
lies just off the stage road in one of these valleys. 
For a mile or more along a little stream, underneath 
a thin crust of earth, water immeasurable is seething 
and boiling, and occasionally breaking through in col- 
umns of steam and in bubbling spouts and streams, — 
too hot to bear the hand in ; — the waste drawn off to 
a neighboring bath-house where chronic rheumatisms 
and blood affections are successfully treated, or tem- 
pering the cool river below. The boiling springs are 
flavored with sulphur and soda, and are similar to 
the more celebrated Geysers in California. In the 
winter the vapor fills the valley, and from this and the 
rumbling, bubbling noise of the seething waters, comes 
the name of Steamboat Springs, which is given them. 
Similar but more pronounced springs lie in Whirl- 
wind Valley, a few miles south of the railroad line in 
the Humboldt Valley. They seem to be the faint 
breathings of dyin^ volcanoes, or the gathering mut- 
terings of new ones. 

Indeed this whole Basin region of the Continent 
is full of the strangest anomalies of nature, puzzling 
the science and defying the industry of man, and 
almost insulting the beneficence of God. The ques- 
tions why, whence, and what ? — why was it so con- 
stituted, whence the forbidding and incongruous ele- 
ments thrown together here, and what can man do 
with it? — press themselves upon every observing 
traveler. Nature seems to be incomplete here. Man 
has entered before she was ready for him, and finds 



THE SALT FIELDS OF THE BASm. 283 

her unprepared for his reception. And yet, between 
the fanaticism of a religion and the passion for gold 
and silver, much has been done towards its settle- 
ment and subjugation. One State has grown up by 
agriculture, and another by mining, all within this 
strange desert land. And after learning her new con- 
ditions, her new laws here, Man comes to find Nature 
still a friend, still willing to minister to his wants. 
But she piques his curiosity, she challenges his flexi- 
bility of character and capacity as never before, as 
nowhere else. The great salt fields in the Basin 
are already put to use. A salt pasture of two thou- 
sand acres in the Smoky Yalley, near the center of 
Nevada, furnishes all the neighboring settlements, 
including Austin, with salt for domestic purposes, 
and for reducing the ores. It gathers on the sur- 
face a thin deposit of half an inch to an inch, and 
is scraped ofi! The rain dissipates it; but the sun 
renews it. Perhaps the alkali fields w^ill yet serve a 
practical purpose; and the deposits of sulphur around 
the bursting springs. But without an increase of 
rain, enlarging the areas of agriculture, no great 
population can be supported. There must be more 
grass and trees and grain, or even the rich deposits 
of minerals in the hills can never be worked with 
certain advantage. 



XY. 

THE mNES OF NEVADA. 

The Beginning of Silver Mining in Nevada and its Eesults — The 
Comstock Lode — Review of the Mines at Austin — Hq-w the Ore is 
Reduced — Details of Operations at Virginia City and Gold Hill — 
The Comstock Lode Nearly Used Up — Inspecting the Mines — A Tour 
through the Gould & Curry IMine — "Nature Abhors a Vacuum" — 
New Discoveries in Nevada — The White Pine Mines and their 
Promise — A Warning to Brigham Young — How the Miners Divide 
their Fat Things — The Fascination of Mining — The Ease with 
which People are Swindled — Mines vs. " Faro Banks" — Advice in 
General and in Particular to those who have the Gold and Silver 
Fever. 

In 1859, Nevada was not; and its mineral wealth 
was unknown. The whole Interior Basin was Utah; 
its sole inhabitants, beside Digger Indians, Mormons, 
who not only had not discovered any mines, but were 
told as of God not to look for them. In that year, 
the outcroppings of the great Comstock lode, at what 
is now Virginia City, were revealed by some wander- 
ing prospectors, and directly there followed the famous 
"Washoe" fever in California. Probably no other min- 
ing excitement in our country was ever so wild and 
wide-spread as this, or led to such reckless emigration 
and speculation. Adventurers of every sort hurried 



THE mINES AT AUSTIN-. 285 

over the mountains from California, regardless of 
weather, or means, or any other element of comfort 
and success. There were of course wide disappoint- 
ment and terrible suffering, much social disorder, and 
shocking political anarchy. But the greatest silver de- 
posit in America was revealed ; the science of minino- 
was rapidly carried to a greater perfection than was 
ever reached before ; and Nevada soon became a State, 
with a smaller population and a larger territorial area 
(Texas, California and Oregon excepted,) than any 
other in the Union. Her mines are almost exclusively 
of silver, — that is, the silver greatly predominates, — 
and the precious metal is found only in its original 
form of rock veins in the mountains. From the Com- 
stock lode, explorations have been made in all direc- 
tions over the entire State; but nothing elsewhere 
has yet been found to compare with that grand de- 
posit. Near one hundred millions of bullion have 
been worked out and taken to market from the State 
since 1859,— about one-third of which was gold, and 
the rest silver, — and at least eighty millions of it all 
came out of the Comstock mines. 

At Austin, the second settlement of the State in 
size, we found the hill-sides dotted with huge ant-hills 
denoting discoveries. About six thousand locations 
had been made; yet no more than seventy-five mines 
have ever been worked up to the producing point, and 
probably not more than a dozen have really been 
profitable. The production of that district has been 
as high as one million a year, but it is not estimated 
now at above half that. The veins of precious de- 
posit are very small, of inches, and rarely of feet in 



286 OUR KEW WEST. 

thickness, but lie near together all around. If they 
are ever extensively and at the same time profitably 
worked, it must be by running a tunnel in under the 
mountain which shall reach a large number of veins 
at once. The ore is rich; from fifty to four hundred 
dollars a ton; but the silver is closely held with sul- 
phurets, and can only be got out by roasting the ore 
with salt, or by smelting, and the former process cost 
about one hundred dollars a ton when we were there 
in 1865. The Kailroad, which lies ninety miles north 
of Austin, will bring to it cheaper labor, food and 
fuel; more likely it will take away its ores to be 
worked where all are cheaper still than they ever 
can be there. 

If the reader has never seen the process of getting 
gold and silver out of the ores, he will be interested 
in a brief account of it, as we saw the work done at 
Austin. The precious metal can rarely be seen in 
the rock, and only the signs of its presence are de- 
tected by the practiced eye. After the quartz or rock 
has been extracted from the mine, it is taken to the 
mill, broken into pieces of from half a pound to two 
pounds in weight, thoroughly dried by the application 
of heat, and then crushed to powder in the mill. The 
crushing is done by stamps, or the dropping of heavy 
weights upon the quartz. Five stamps are usually 
arrayed side by side, weighing from ^yb to seven 
hundred pounds each. They are raised a distance of 
from eight to ten inches, and dropped from sixty to 
eighty-five times a minute. The powdered rock then 
goes through a wire sieve, whence it is taken to a 
furnace, mixed with salt, which assists in freeing the 



HOW THE OKES AKE REDUCED. 287 

silver and gold from its surroundings or combina- 
tions^ and then subjected to the action of a stream of 
flame from five to eight hours, during which time it 
is constantly stirred. As this flame carries off* some 
silver bodily, it is made to pass through a long cham- 
ber, and exposed to cooler air before reaching the 
chimney, so that the silver can be saved. After being 
thus roasted, the pulverized quartz is ready for amal- 
gamation. At the Midas Mill, which was considered 
to be the best mill at Reese River, the amalgamation 
is done by the Freiburg barrels, into which loose and 
irregular pieces of iron are placed for the purpose of 
mixing the quicksilver with the pulp, (as the pulver- 
ized quartz is called,) and which are then revolved 
over and over. In other mills, the pulp is put into 
tubSj and stirred in water for nearly an hour, and 
then the quicksilver is applied, and the mass is stirred 
by means of iron flanges for three hours. About 
seventy-five pounds of quicksilver are allowed for 
one thousand pounds of pulp, the quicksilver amal- 
gamating with or taking up the little unseen particles 
of silver now separated from their original associa- 
tions. After this, the water is drawn ofl*, and a proc- 
ess like the distillation of cider brandy is resorted 
to for the purpose of saving the quicksilver, and 
the amalgam, composed of silver and quicksilver, is 
squeezed, to get out the quicksilver, after which it is 
put into the retort, and upon being subjected to heat 
more quicksilver passes off in fumes, and is saved, and 
the crude bullion which is left is ready to be taken to 
the assay ofiice. This is substantially the process 
used at Reese River, where dry crushing is necessary, 



288 OUR NEW WEST. 

on account of the presence of tlie baser metals. In 
Virginia and its vicinity^ where the ore is of a different 
character^ and far less rich, it is crushed wet, and not 
roasted, and the expense is much less. The common 
gold ores of Colorado and California are also treated 
in the latter way. Crushing by stamps and amalga- 
mating with quicksilver are the two fundamental and 
universal features of all processes for reducing gold 
and silver ores, except that of smelting. 

The operations on the Comstock lode at Virginia 
City and Gold Hill next and more thoroughly com- 
manded our attention. Midway of a long hill-side, 
this ledge of metal-bearing rock runs for several 
miles; the towns are built in part directly over it; 
the excavations beneath in shafts and drifts foot up 
about thirty-five miles, and amount to much more 
than all the streets of the towns above; and the 
timber used in a single one of the forty mines that 
extend along upon the lode, for sustaining the walls 
of the excavations, exceeds all that employed in the 
buildings of Virginia City, \7itK its ten thousand 
inhabitants ! Occasionally the crust over a mine has 
broken in, and buildings have been swallowed up as 
in the vortex of an earthquake. The deepest shafts 
of the mines go down from seven hundred to eight 
hundred feet, and out from these long tunnels or 
chambers are opened at different points upon the 
line of the precious rock. 

The richness and extent of this lode have intro- 
duced the most thorough system into the business of 
mining and milling ; and the education of America in 
the science and practice of mining gathers around 



THE GOULD & CURRY AND OPHIR MINES. 289 

the history of operations here. At the first there 
were great extravagance and wanton waste; all the 
machinery used and all the means of living had to be 
drawn over the mountains from California at enormous 
cost ; but the lode was thought to be inexhaustible, 
and the great profits made by a few of the mines 
seduced all into the freest expenditures and reckless- 
ness. The history of the Gould & Curry mine, one 
of the largest and most famous upon the lode, may 
be given in illustration both of the character of the 
property and its management. It owns twelve hun- 
dred feet on the up|)er surface of the lode, cost the 
stockholders originally but one hundred and eighty 
thousand dollars, and has yielded fourteen million 
dollars in gold and silver, and spent all but four 
millions, which the stockholders have received in 
dividends, in development, experiments, and improve- 
ments. It has a mill for reducing the ore which cost 
one million dollars. Had there been a railroad from 
San Francisco to Virginia City at the beginning, this 
mine's profits would have been twice as much. But 
now its glory has departed, and within the last two 
years it has had to call upon its stockholders for 
assessments to pay expenses. Another great com- 
pany, the Ophir, has taken out thirteen millions of 
dollars, but used it nearly all up in expenditures, and 
probably not returned to the stockholders so much 
as they have paid in. 

The Comstock ledge ore is, as already stated, with 
small exceptions, much more simple in its combina- 
tions than that at Austin, and the metal is extracted 
by simply crushing and amalgamating. Fifty dollars 
18 



290 OUR NEW WEST. 

was always a good average yield per ton; and this 
has now decreased so that the average of all the 
mines for the last two years has been less than forty 
dollars. To meet this lower yield per ton, however, 
is a greatly decreased cost of working the ore, and 
the whole expense of mining and reducing does not 
exceed twenty-five dollars a ton, and is even brought 
as low as eighteen and twenty dollars by the Gould 
& Curry company. The probability is that even this 
cost may be much reduced, and that ore which will 
yield but ten and fifteen dollars to the ton can soon 
be worked with profit. The great element in the 
cost of reduction is the high price of wood, which 
has often to be brought from long distances, and sells 
for from fifteen to twenty dollars a cord. There are 
nearly eighty mills or reduction works employed on 
ore from the Comstock lode, scattered through a re- 
gion of twenty miles in extent, in order to be near 
as may be to wood and water. They get out but 
about two-thirds the metal in the ore; the rest is 
wasted, or remains to be obtained by reworking 
under a cleaner and cheaper process. 

But now this great deposit of precious mineral 
gives signs of being nearly worked out. The sur- 
rounding walls of barren rock are closing in at the 
bottom of the mines ; and though there is much valu- 
able ore left on the sides of most, and at the bottom 
of many, of the mines, the more intelligent scientific 
opinion is, that there is henceforth to be a gradual 
lessening of the production of the lode, and a conse- 
quent gradual decay in the towns to which it has 
given birth and support. The total yield of all the 



HOW WE EXPLORED MINES. 291 

mines in the lode up to January 1^ 1869, is little 
short of ninety millions of dollars, beginning in 1859 
with fifty thousand dollars, going up to sixteen mil- 
lions in 1864, and to sixteen and a half millions in 
1867, — its year of greatest production, — but falling 
suddenly off in 1868 to about eight millions, which 
it will probably never again exceed. It is held, how- 
ever, by many intelligent and interested parties, that 
deeper excavations will develop new deposits, and 
that, instead of the lode being nearly used up, there 
is really no end to it. Such theorists urge the con- 
struction of a great tunnel, from far down the valley, 
into the mountain and the lode, to be about four 
miles long, and to strike the deposits of mineral, — if 
it remains, — at a depth of two thousand feet from the 
surface. By this means, the mines would be easily 
drained of water, which, as they descend, often comes 
freely in and now requires to be pumped out at great 
cost; while the ore could be rolled out of the tunnel 
much cheaper than it is now drawn up the shafts. 
But it is doubtful if there is faith enough in the con- 
tinuance of the deposit among the capitalists of Ne- 
vada and California to secure the necessary two mil- 
lions dollars for this great work; and the application 
to Congress for aid is simply preposterous, and will 
not be granted. 

We had a good deal of experience, both at Austin 
and Virginia, in exploring the mines. At the former 
place, the prospectors were all anxious we should see 
every one of their several thousands of holes, and were 
a good deal disgusted that our party had but three 
days to spare for them. That is not time enough, 



292 OUR NEW WEST. 

they said; you cannot begin to see what we have got; 
you might as well not have come. But let us try, 
was the reply; show us Avhat you can in three days, 
and then see what is left that is new and strange. 
So we mounted ; and there was an extensive cavalcade 
of local officials, practical miners, speculators, and 
genteel bummers generally. We went over and 
around hills, down into mines, through mills, every- 
where that our guides led us; finding naturally great 
similarity of sights and testimony all about. By 
afternoon, our hosts had dwindled one-half The next 
morning, instead of a dozen, we had but three or four 
guides; at noon, they were reduced to one, and at 
night we had exhausted not only his strength and 
patience, but all he had to show us. We had seen 
Austin and its mines, and had a day to spare ! 

The newer mines, whose shafts are but fifty or one 
hundred feet, are descended by a simple rope and 
bucket, worked by a common hand windlass ; older 
and deeper ones, by the same contrivance, with steam 
power : if, as is often the case, the vein runs at an 
angle, or is reached below in that way, a little car 
runs down a steep track, held and drawn by a heavy 
rope and steam engine ; while other shafts are pro- 
vided with ladders, winding around, or set perpen- 
dicularly up and down. The latest and safest and 
readiest contrivance for descending a perpendicular 
shaft is a cage or box, let down by a rope with steam 
power, but provided with sharp, opening arms that, in 
case the rope breaks, will catch into the walls with 
such power as to hold the cage and its load. Its 
certainty was proven to us by cutting the rope with 



EXPEEIENCE IIS" A MINE. 293 

an ax, when the cage sent out its fingers and clung 
midway in its passage. We reached the insides of 
other mines by long tunnels, running into the veins 
from the surface, far down the hill-sides on which they 
were located. 

The great Gould & Curry mine at Virginia has four 
or five miles' length of shafts and tunnels, and it 
is a full half day's work to explore it thoroughly. 
We entered it through a long tunnel, that strikes 
the vein several hundred feet below the surface. 
There were half a dozen of us in the procession, 
each with a lighted candle, which would go out 
under the out-going draft, and so we soon contented 
ourselves with groping along in the dim, cavernous 
light. It seemed a very long journey, and the nerves 
had to brace themselves. The most stolid person, 
stranger to such experience, will hardly fail to find 
his heart beating a little quicker, as he goes into 
these far-away, narrow recesses in the bowels of 
the earth. I never failed to remember the principle 
that "Nature abhors a vacuum," and to wonder if 
she wouldn't take the present occasion to close up 
this Httle one that I was in ! At last we reached the 
scenes of the ore and the work after it; and among 
these we clambered and wandered about, down shaft's 
to this or that level, and then out on side tunnels 
through the vein in both directions; up again by 
narrow, pokerish ladders to a higher set of cham- 
bers, in and out, up and down, till we were lost in 
amazing confusion. Here was, indeed, a city of 
streets and population far under the surface of the 
earth. Many of the chambers or streets were de- 



294 OUE NEW WEST. 

serted ; in others we found little coteries of miners, 
picking away at the hard rock, and loading up cars 
of the ore, that were sent out by the tunnels or up 
by the shafts to the surface above. Here, too, was 
a building in a wide hall under ground, and a steam 
engine to help on the work. Some of the chambers 
had closed in after being worked out of ore ; others 
have been filled up to prevent caving in and caus- 
ing great disaster overhead ; but many of the open 
jDassages were stayed or braced open still with huge 
frame-work of timber. The annual cost of lumber 
for such purposes in all the mines of the Comstock 
lode is about a million and a half of dollars. In 
many of these passages, such is the outward pressure 
into the vacuum, that these timbers, as big as a man's 
body, are bent and splintered almost in two. Great 
pine sticks, eighteen inches square, were thus bent 
like a bow, or yawned with gaping splinters; and 
the spaces left in some places for us to go through 
were in this way reduced so small that we almost 
had to crawl to get along. Do you wonder that 
we began to grow weary, and thought we had seen 
enough ? Besides, the mine was oppressively hot 
and close ; the mercury was up to one hundred de- 
grees and more, and the sweat poured from us like 
water. One of our party grew faint and feeble, and 
we voted to take the nearest way out. This hap- 
pened to be the most perilous and trying; but we 
did not realize that, and our miner guide, unsensitive 
from experience, did not think of it. So he took us 
into a long shaft, running straight up and down for 
several hundreds of feet, damp and dark as night, 



NEW DISCOVERIES IN NEVADA. 295 

with no breaks or landing-places, and there started 
nSj one after another, up a perpendicular ladder fas- 
tened to its side. We only took in a sense of the 
thing after we had got started ; each must carry his 
lighted candle, hold on, and creep ahead ; a single 
misstep by any one, the fainting of our invalid, or of 
any of us, all weary and unstrung, would not only 
have plunged that one headlong down the long fatal 
flight, to become a very Mantilinean cold body at the 
bottom, but would have swept everybody below him 
on the ladder, like a row of bricks, to the same des- 
tination and destruction. There was, you may well 
believe, a stern summoning of all remaining strength 
and nerves, a close, firm grip on the rounds of the 
ladder, a silent, grave procession, much and rapid 
thought, and a very long breath, and a very fervent 
if voiceless prayer, when v/e got to the dayhght and 
the top. Our part of the shaft and the ladder was 
about one hundred and. fifty feet; it seemed very 
long; and we were content to call our day's work 
done when it was over. Brains won the victory over 
body ; but both were weary enough at the end. But 
if I prolong this story any further, you will almost 
wish I had never got out of that shaft ! 

While the great silver deposit, which gave birth and 
being to Nevada, is apparently rapidly declining in 
richness, other discoveries are made in various parts 
of the State, new centers of mining and population 
are created^ and the aggregate productiveness and 
the total number of inhabitants bid fair to increase 
rather than decrease. Nevada's claim to the name of 
the Silver State is not only good yet but brightening. 



296 OUR NEW WEST. 

And, so, spite of the poverty of her soil and climate, — 
forcing her to depend mainly on her neighbors for 
food to eat, and clothes to wear, and lumber to build 
with, — she vindicates her star's place on the Union 
flag. Many dispute whether she has yet paid ex- 
penses, — that is, returned as much money as has been 
expended upon her, — but she certainly has greatly 
stimulated the settlement of the Great Interior Basin 
of the far West, and redeemed it from its traditional 
dedication to desert and death. So, let us join in the 
popular toast, " Long may she wave ! " 

How well these later mining discoveries and de- 
velopments are distributed over the broad area of 
the State will be impressed upon every student of 
the map. Beginning with Utah, they are scattered 
freely all through the central belt of the State to the 
California line, while north, to and along the Hum- 
l^oldt River, and south-east to the neighborhood of the 
Colorado River, and south-west to the Owens' Valley 
country in south-eastern California, more or less nu- 
merous mining camps are established, and more or 
less machinery, carted all the way from California at 
ten to thirty cents a pound, is pounding away on 
hopeful silver ores. The Humboldt, Austin, Belmont, 
Aurora, Silver Peak, Egan Canyon, Pahranagat, Cor- 
tez and Palmetto districts, representing every section 
of the State, are each probably good for half a mill- 
ion of silver a year on the average ; while the new 
White Pine district threatens to rival the Comstock 
lode itself These last discoveries are situated in 
the far easterly section of the State near Utah and 
south of the central line, one hundred and forty miles 



THE WHITE PINE MINES. 297 

south of the Eailroad at Elko, and about seven hun- 
dred miles east of San Francisco, and perhaps one 
hundred and fifty south-west from Salt Lake City. 
They are located high up on the mountains, — from 
seven thousand to nine thousand feet above the sea 
level, — and great size of ore veins and great richness 
of ore are alike claimed for them. Two million dol- 
lars' worth of silver had been taken out of two or three 
of the mines before the 1st of January of this year, 
and ore containing an equal amount was at hand for 
workino; from a sino-le mine a month later. No such 
excitement has been known among the miners and 
mining speculators of the Pacific Coast, since the 
early days of the Comstock lode revelations, as has 
been awakened over White Pine by these pretensions 
and facts. From four thousand to five thousand 
people have been spending the winter there ; a few 
at work, more waiting impatiently for the snow to 
go away that they may work, but the most living 
by their wits and their vices. The great elevation 
of the location, the deep snows, the want of lumber, 
the scarcity of houses, even of shanties and tents, 
the distance from markets, and the high prices of 
everything, have combined to make the early days 
of White Pine exceed in severity of suffering and 
wantonness of life the ordinary experience of new 
mining settlements. We quote some of the winter 
prices of 1869 there: — 

Lumber, $250 to $300 per thousand; hay, $300 
per ton; barley 15 cents per pound; flour $16 per 
cwt. ; bacon, 45 cents; salt pork, 40 cents; beans, 
28 cents; sugar, 35 cents; coffee, 70 cents; tea, 



298 OUK NEW WEST. 

$1.50 per pound ; butter, $1 ; cheese, 40 cents ; 
rice, 38 cents; fresh meats, from 22 to 40 cents; 
sausages, 50 cents ; lard, 38 cents ; board per week, 
$15; lodgmgs, $1 per night; laborers get from $5 
to $6 per day, and mechanics from $8 to $10. 

Probably the summer of 1869 will witness the gath- 
ering in that region of fifteen thousand to twenty 
thousand people, — some estimates are of twice these 
numbers, — but even if the mines prove as rich as re- 
ported, — which is not at all probable, — the majority 
will share the usual experience of those who rush 
wildly after such excitements, and suffer disappoint^ 
ment, loss, ruin, and probable depravation in body 
and soul. 

But the development of so great an interest and 
the gathering so large a population will plant a stub- 
born colony of Gentiles on the southern border of 
Utah, and if the early discoveries prove half whai 
they promise, there will speedily be a railroad down 
through Nevada or Utah to that section, seeking 
ultimately a connection with the Colorado Elver 
and the Southern Pacific Railroad. And then will 
Brigham Young, under like circumstances of alarm, 
repeat the prayer of the representative of the " twin 
barbarism," Jeff Davis, and ask, too late, to be "let 
alone." 

With this record of the beginning' of a new and 
important mining settlement, our readers, who are 
unaccustomed to the history of mining develo^Dments, 
will be interested to know how the discoverers and 
first-comers in such cases arrange their claims, and 
protect their rights to the precious land. The man- 



THE LAWS OF THE MINEES. 299 

ner of their proceeding is an illustration of the adapt- 
ability of the American people to self-government, 
and their strong instinct for fair play. At the outset 
the miners of a particular region get together, of 
their own motion, fix the limits and name of their 
district, and establish a series of rules, which may be 
altered in methods therein prescribed, for the loca- 
tion, holding and working of mines. The funda- 
mental idea which runs through all of these rules 
is, that he who finds a mine shall have the right to 
locate upon the ledge a certain number of feet in his 
own name, after which other locations may be made 
by anybody. In practice the discoverer usually lo- 
cates a number of claims in the names of his friends. 
The validity of these locations depends upon doing 
upon the ledge a certain amount of work within a 
certain time. Provisions are also inserted which are 
designed to meet such contingencies as can be fore- 
seen; but, although the general principles are in ac- 
cordance with just views of what is right, it is of 
course impossible to provide for every condition of 
things; and, besides, the rules themselves are ex- 
pressed in language not always clear. In more fa- 
miliar way, because we have been doing that ever 
since the organization on board the Mayflower, the 
miners organize their social and political government; 
and if that fails, or proves them false, they speedily 
rectify it with vigilance committees. Where mines 
prove valuable, there are apt to be many conflicting 
claims, some real, others bogus, and lawyers^ and I 
am sorry to suspect judges also, often get very rich, 
suddenly, in the adjudication of such cases. Ques- 



300 OUR NEW WEST. 

tions of fact constantly arise, whether enough work 
has been done to hold a claim, and whether two 
veins which appear on the surface to be different do 
or do not in fact ultimately run into each other. If 
they do come together the oldest location prevails. 
It is well understood that there is a government title, 
which, if ultimately insisted on, is beneath all titles 
to mining property; but Congress has already suf&- 
ciently settled the principle that the claims of the 
discoverers and miners, and those who hold under 
them, as established by the laws of the mining dis- 
trict, shall be respected by the government. It 
should be added that the miners' rights are superior 
to all other rights of property except the government 
title. The survey, location and ownership of a piece 
of land as real estate gives no right, under the miners' 
laws, to the minerals which it contains. 

Nothing is so extraordinary in human history as 
the fascination of mining for the precious metals, and 
the readiness with which people engage or invest in 
it, against the testimony of all experience, not merely 
to its uncertainty, but to its general direct loss. Ex- 
cept from the incidental, indirect results, as the open- 
ing up a new country, with the commerce and agri- 
culture, that follow the original movement to the 
mines, the search for the precious metals has proba- 
bly never, on the whole, paid expenses. Certainly 
Brigham Young's assertion to that effect is yet to 
be disproved. California has received a hundred mill- 
ion dollars in silver and gold from Nevada; but her 
wisest business men say, she has spent more than an 
equal sum to get it, — in roads, machinery, buildings^ 



MINES VS. FARO BANKS. 301 

labor, etc. The blanks are largely in excess of the 
prizes in the lottery of mining, even when every- 
thing is conducted honestly and wisely. But the 
swindling that enters into the business, and the suc- 
cess with which it imposes on the public, are equally 
astounding in extent. There were, for instance, seven 
hundred companies organized in California to work 
on the Comstock lode alone ; yet only a hundred of 
them ever had real property there; and of these but 
about forty ever worked mines, and less than half of 
this reduced number ever paid dividends. One com- 
pany, that owned and worked a mine, even on that 
rich lode, spent a million dollars, and got back nothing. 
Boston people have within five years put at least two 
million dollars into the mines of Colorado, and Reese 
River, Nevada, — and got back nothing! To those of 
us, who have traveled into these mining regions, and 
learned the facts upon the ground, it is indeed per- 
fectly surprising to observe the recklessness with 
which investments in gold and silver-mining property 
have been made at the East. Prudent, sagacious, 
and experienced persons, who would not pay ten 
thousand dollars for a country house, or five hun- 
dred dollars for a horse, without careful considera- 
tion and examination, appropriate much larger sums 
to the, purchase of mining interests, merely upon 
the representations of the sellers. Some purchasers 
invested with so little care that they will never 
be able to find even the ground where their pre- 
tended property lies, — lies, indeed it does! I do 
not wonder at the remark of a citizen of Nevada, 
that he didn't see why Eastern gentlemen invested 



302 OUR NEW WEST. 

SO freely in mines out there when there were "faro 
banks" so much nearer home ! Probably he had 
no mines to sell ! 

But spite of all the warnings of experience, and 
the advice of the intelligent, the story of the gross 
swindlings and the foolish speculations of Washoe, of 
Eeese Kiver, of Idaho and Montana, is likely to be 
repeated with White Pine, and again and still again 
with whatever successors that now latest El Dorado 
may have. Yet I brave anew the weakness of human 
nature, and sum up in a few words of advice the 
results of our wide observation in the mining coun- 
tries of the great interior : — 

1. No investments should be made in mines except 
after the most intelligent and complete study of the 
whole subject, and of the merits of the s|)ecial enter- 
prise offered, either by the capitalist himself, or by 
some one in whom he can place the most implicit 
confidence. Not only the mine itself should offer 
assured evidence of value, and of favorable location, 
but the capitalist should also be satisfied of its man- 
agement by persons of both intelligence and integrity. 
This point is as vital as the other, and as difficult, 
more difficult indeed, to be secured. These qualities 
of intelligence and integrity are rare in the market 
out here, and command a high price. They can 
generally do better than to work for other people. 
Eastern capitalists, investing largely, — and it is cer- 
tainly best to invest enough to command their per- 
sonal attention, or not at all, — will always find it 
wise to send out one of their own number, or a 
person equally reliable, to oversee the expenditures 



cautio:n' as to the yalue of ores. 303 

and direct the financial part of tlieir operations, and 
let liim find here that scientific and practical knowl- 
edge on the subject of mining that he cannot of course 
possess. This he will obtain in mining engineers of 
repute, and in old practical miners, the latter most 
often men who have been foremen or overseers in 
mines or mills. The discoverers and prospectors of 
mines are a class by themselves, and are rarely the 
right men to work a mine for other people. But the 
working miners as a body are of a higher grade than 
Eastern laborers, and they offer many individuals fit 
for the upper places in the business. I was impressed 
with the wisdom of an organization which a party of 
Ehode Island capitalists had made in Colorado. They 
combined four or five different mines and mills, each 
distinct in its affairs, under the general management 
or overseership of an experienced scientific miner 
from California, and sent along with him from home 
a common treasurer and accountant. In this way 
they got the benefit of the best talent and experi- 
ence, and the most reliable guardianship over the 
expenditures, without making the cost thereof too 
heavy; but I believe they are still a million or two 
^^ short" of their original investments. 

2. When somebody offers you a mine, whose ore 
assays one thousand or ten thousand dollars a ton, 
you need not necessarily disbelieve him, but do not 
necessarily conclude that all its ore, for an indefinite 
distance into the earth, is of equal value. The Corn- 
stock ledge was opened with a chunk that yielded 
twenty thousand to thirty thousand dollars per ton, 
or at that rate ; but as I have told you, the mines on 



304 OUR NEW WEST. 

that ledge that are paying at all, do not average forty 
dollars from their ore. Every day new discoveries 
are being made, south and north, in the State, of 
lodes whose surface ore pays, according to report, 
any amount this side of one hundred thousand dol- 
lars a ton ; yet it does not follow that the mine below 
it will even pay for working. For these are among 
the doubtful things that are very uncertain in their 
progress. Even the poorest mines have their streaks 
and chunks of rich ore; do not, therefore, judge by a 
single iist-fuU nor by an assay; but invest your 
money only after you have ascertained how much 
your mine will practically work out, cart-load by 
cart-load, without culling. 

3. Above all things, do not buy mills, ^^ processes" 
or reduction works of any kind, until you are sure of 
your ore. Colorado is especially full of blunders of 
that sort, — expensive mills and no ore, or at least un- 
proved mines; the money all spent in buildings and 
machinery, and none left to prove the real quality of 
the mines. There is a superabundance of mills and 
machinery in all the mining States and Territories 
already. Colorado probably has nearly or quite one 
hundred mills and "processes," not more than half of 
which are at work now, and all are not worth one- 
quarter what they cost. Nevada has an equal num- 
ber of mills, and probably a greater amount of ma- 
chinery in all her mining districts, the lumber coming 
from the Sierra Nevadas and the machinery from San 
Francisco, and drawn over the mountains and across 
the desert by horses and mules, at a total cost of full 
seven millions dollars, and yet the whole not worth 



ADVICE ABOUT MINING INVESTMENTS. 305 

to-day, more than two or three millions. At least 
two-thirds of these are probably at work now, and 
half of them profitably. The first business in every 
mining enterprise is to work the mine and get out 
the ore, which can be crushed at the custom mills, al- 
ready or soon to be abundant, in the neighborhood 
of all the mining centers; and then, measuring the 
profits thus realized, and finding them sure and relia- 
ble, the managers can decide whether it is best to 
extend operations with them, by buying and working 
more mines or by running their own mills. 

4. Do not make the capital of your mining com- 
pany out of all proportion to the value or cost of the 
enterprise. Avoid putting up a property, that has 
cost one hundred thousand dollars and needs a work- 
ing capital of as much more, to two millions, because 
you may hope sometime to pay a ten per cent, div- 
idend on such a sum. And then, again, do not insist 
on having a dividend at the end of the first thirty 
days, unless you are ready to pay an assessment at 
the beginning thereof to meet it. 

5. And if you have neither time nor money enough, 
nor disposition, perhaps, to go largely into these min- 
ing enterprises, and follow their management intelli- 
gently, but still would like to make some small 
ventures to fortune in this direction, seek out some 
company that are in or going into the business, on 
these principles, and that have got a reasonably sure 
thing of it, and make your investment with them; 
and then be content with twenty-five per cent, re- 
turn for your money. If it yields more, give it away 
in charity, — if less, or even nothing, don't swear or 

19 



306 OUK NEW WEST. 

mention it to your wife, for the confession will give 
her an undue advantage over you. 

6. Those who undertake mining purchases in Ne- 
vada or elsewhere, or indeed any investments in this 
quarter, must not think to find these people out here 
wanting in sharpness at a bargain. Wall street is 
easily out-managed by Montgomery street, and an 
old miner, who is generally a traditional Yankee with 
large improvements, will fool a dozen spectacled pro- 
fessors from your colleges in a single day. The lat- 
ter «ort of people are, indeed, at a great discount in 
this region, as all the rules of science with which 
they come equipped, are outraged and .defied by the 
location and combination of ores, rocks, oils and soils 
on this side of the Ro6ky Mountains. 

7. Finally, while it is true that the opening of the 
Pacific Railroad, reducing the cost of living and of 
labor, carrying ores to fuel, or fuel to ores, and ma- 
chinery to mines, will greatly lessen the cost of min- 
ing in the interior States and Territories, I fall back 
on the testimony of an eminent scientific authority, 
Professor J. D. Whitney of the California State Sur- 
vey, for proof that my advice and my warnings hold 
good as to the business of mining everywhere and 
under the most favorable circumstances : — 

" Extremely few metalliferous veins are equally rich for any consider- 
able distance, either lengthwise or up and down ; the valuable portions 
of the ore are concentrated in masses which are frequently very limited 
in extent, compared with the mass of the vein, in which they are con- 
tained. Indications of valuable ores on the surface do not always, nor 
once in a hundred times, lead to masses of ore beneath the surface of a 
sufficient extent and purity to be worked with profit. There are, liter- 
ally and truly, thousands of places in New England where ores of the 



PROFESSOR WHITNEY ON MINING. 307 

metals, including silver, copper, tin, lead, zinc, cobalt and nickel, tave 
been observed ; many of these have given rise to mining excitements, 
and have been taken up, worked for a time, abandoned, taken up again, 
abandoned again, off and on for the last fifty or even a hundred years, 
and always with partial, and usually with a total, loss of the money in- 
vested. There may be one solitary mine in Vermont which is paying a 
small profit to the share-holders ; but with the exception of this, and a 
few mines of iron ore on the border of Massachusetts and Connecticut, 
there is not one which has not cruelly burned the fingers of those who 
have meddled with them. Even on Lake Superior, that region which 
is commonly appealed to as made up of solid copper, there have been 
many hundreds of companies formed, and at least a hundred mines 
opened and worked more or less extensively ; but for ten years after 
mining had begun to be actively carried on there, only two of the mines 
had paid back to the stockholders one cent of dividend. Even in Eng- 
land, it is the opinion of Mr. Hunt, the Keeper of Mining Records, 
who has devoted many years to the investigation of the statistics of this 
branch of the Nation's wealth, that mining for the metallic minerals, 
with the exception of iron, is not on the whole remunerative. There is 
a wonderful fascination about the mining business, which seems to blind 
the eyes and bewilder the senses of those who come within the sphere 
of its influence. The organ of hope seems to swell up and predomi- 
nate over all the others : — what phantasmagoria will men not follow, if 
there is any metallic luster about it ! " 



XVI. 

OVER THE MOUNTAINS TO THE OCEAN. 

The Stage Hide over the Sierra Nevadas — The Mountain Toll Roads 
and Freighting and Staging upon them — Rapid Riding — A Break- 
neck Pace — The Scenery of the Sierras — Lake Tahoe — Placerville 
— Sacramento — A Steamboat Ride to San Francisco — The Patriotic 
Traveler on Reaching the Pacific Coast — The Unity of the American 
People — The Wonderful Development of the Pacific States. 

It was with fresh feelings that we turned away 
from Nevada, and began the last stage of our jour- 
ney to the Pacific Ocean. The long looked-for Sierra 
Nevada Mountains confronted us; but their bights 
invited and not repelled, for they bore the compan- 
ionship of Nature's life and glory, for which our 
hearts were hungry. Long on the desert plain and 
the barren mountain, — sad-eyed with weeks away 
from forests and sparkling waters, and the verdure 
of grass and vines and flowers, — they offered to us 
indeed the golden pathway to the Golden Gate of 
the Pacific. 

The ride over the mountains, down their western 
slopes, on to the ocean, was a succession of delights 
and surprises. The surging and soughing of the 
wind among the tall pines of the Sierras came like 



THE MOUNTAIN EOADS TO CALIFOENIA. 309 

sweetest music, laden with memories of home and 
friends and youth. Brass bands begone, operas 
avaunt ! in such presence as we found ourselves 
on the mountain top of a moonlight night, by the 
banks of Lake Tahoe, among forests to which the 
largest in New England are but pigmies, lying and 
listening by the water to the coming of the Pacific 
breeze and its delicate play upon the high tree-tops. 
All human music was but sound and fury, signifying 
nothing, before such harmonies of high nature. The 
pines of these mountains, indeed, seemed to us mon- 
sters, — three, four, five feet through, and running up 
to heaven for light, straight and clear as an arrow by 
the hundred feet. Rich green-yellow mosses clung to 
many a trunk ; while firs and balsams filled up the 
vacant spots between the kingly pines ; and laughing 
waters sported lustily before our unaccustomed eyes, 
among the rocks in the deep ravines, along and far 
below the road on which our horses galloped up hill 
and down at a fearful pace. 

Our journey now, — be it borne in mind, — was 
before the Railroad, which has destroyed this, the 
finest bit of stage travel in all our continental jour- 
ney. There were two well-graded toll roads over the 
mountains, from Sacramento in California to Virginia 
City in Nevada ; one by Placerville and Lake Tahoe, 
the other by Dutch Flat and Donner Lake, and each 
about one hundred and sixty miles long. The Rail- 
road takes substantially the route of the latter; but 
in the days of staging and teaming, the Placerville 
road was the favorite. The amount of traffic upon 
it was immense. Two or three stage loads of passen- 



310 OUR NEW WEST. 

gers passed each way daily. Mercliandise and ma- 
chinery were carried in huge freight wagons, holding 
from five to ten tons each, and drawn by ten or twelve 
large, strong horses or mules, moving to the music of 
bells attached to their harnesses. In 1863, no less 
than twelve million dollars were paid for freight over 
the Placerville road, and the tolls received by the 
builders of the road amounted to six hundred thou- 
sand dollars. In 1864, a year of less business, seven 
thousand teams passed over the road. The charges 
for freight varied from ^Ye to ten cents a pound. To 
keep the road hard and in repair, as well as to allay 
the fearful dust that would otherwise have made the 
ride a trial rather than a pleasure, nearly the whole 
line was artificially watered during the long, dry 
summer. Luxurious as this seems, — the daily sprink- 
ling of one hundred and fifty miles of mountain road, 
— and expensive as it was, it was found to be the 
simplest and cheapest mode of keeping the road in 
good repair. The stages were drawn by six fleet, 
gay horses, changed every ten miles, without the 
driver's even leaving his seat. 

Thus munificently prepared, and amid the finest 
mountain scenery in the world, we swept up the hills 
at a round trot, and rolled down again at the sharp- 
est gallop, turning abrupt corners without a pull-up, 
twisting among and past the loaded teams of freight 
toiling over into Nevada, and running along the 
edge of high precipices, all as deftly as the skater 
flies or the steam car runs; though for many a mo- 
ment we held our faintins; breath at what seemed 
great risks or dare-devil performances. A full day's 



LAKE TAHOE. 311 

ride was made at a rate exceeding ten miles an hour ; 
and a continuous seven miles over the rolling hills 
along the crest of the range was driven within twen- 
ty-six minutes. The loss of such exhilarating ex- 
perience is enough to put the traveler out of conceit 
with superseding railroads. 

All over the Sierras on our road, the scenery was 
full of various beauty; some of its features have 
already been mentioned; but another chief one was 
the high walls of rock, rising abruptly and perpen- 
dicularly 'from the valley for many hundreds of feet. 
Many a rich boulder, again a hill, and a frequent 
mountain peak of pure rock, thousands of feet high, 
like pyramids of Egypt, are seen along the passage. 
The whole scenery of the Sierras is more like that of 
the Swiss Alps than any other in America, and has 
even features of surpassing attraction. 

Near the very summit, we stopped for a trout 
breakfast and an initial steamboat ride across Lake 
Tahoe, one of the largest and most beautiful of the 
mountain lakes of California. It is located six thou- 
sand five hundred feet high, overlooked by snow- 
capped peaks, bordered by luscious forests; stretches 
wide for eight by fourteen miles in extent, with wa- 
ters clear and rare almost as air, — so rare, indeed, 
that not even a sheet of paper can float, but quick- 
ly sinks, and swimming is nearly impossible; and 
abounds in trout: — where, indeed, are more elements 
of lake beauty and attraction ? Already, though far 
from large populations, it has its mountain and lake 
hotel, and draws many summer visitors from Calilbr- 
nia and Nevada. 



312 OUR NEW WEST. 

Placervllle, the first large town in California^ gave 
■QS a most hearty welcome. Mr. Colfax had to eat 
a grand dinner at midnight^ and make three speeches 
to his enthusiastic hosts. Early in California his- 
tory^ i. e. in 1850^ Placerville was the center of pros- 
perous gold-mining; indeed, only twelve miles away, 
were the first gold discoveries in the State made; 
but that interest has since gone into decay. Next 
the outfitting for the mountain traffic to Nevada 
kept the town busy and prosperous; it built a rail- 
road to Sacramento, and hoped to be on the line of 
the through continental track; but disappointed in 
that, its old life has faded away, and now it is fall- 
ing back successfully on the capacities of the soil; 
and vineyards and mulberry groves and sheep-walks 
place its future beyond the chances of speculation 
and the shifting currents of trade. Lying in valley 
and on hill-side, well watered and with quick-answer- 
ing soil, already it is a village of verdure; flowers 
and vines and fruit-trees almost hide its houses; and 
no place among the foot-hills of the Sierra Nevadas is 
better worth a stran goer's visit. 

Sacramento gave us the next greeting, with roses 
and fruit, and a luxurious breakfast, and speeches, 
and the inevitable brass band. The town lies flat 
and low, and yet most pleasantly, at the foot of the 
Sacramento Valley proper, and the head of heavy 
navigation on that river from San Francisco, fairly 
in the center of the State, the gathering point of its 
interior commerce, the diverging point for all its 
railways, the political capital, and a charming social 
focus and inland residence, — answering very much 



DOW^ THE EIYER TO SAIS" FRANCISCO. 313 

to such Eastern towns as Springfield and Hartford, 
Cleveland and Columbus. Floods in the river have 
threatened its existence ; but high banks now deny 
them entrance ; manufactories of machinery of every 
grade, of cars and engines, of boots and shoes, of pre^ 
pared lumber, of flour, pottery, glue and brooms, are 
already in profitable progress ; excellent schools and 
fine churches are provided ; a State capitol of mag- 
nificent proportions is in rapid course of construc- 
tion ; and with a population of twenty thousand to 
twenty-five thousand, engaged in a diversified indus- 
try or a legitimate trade, and rapidly increasing, the 
town will fully keep its place as the second in im- 
portance in the State, and always be one of the most 
interesting points for the traveler to tarry at. 

An afternoon and evening ride, on a spacious 
and elegant steamboat, rivalling the best that ply on 
Long Island Sound or Hudson Kiver, down the Sacra- 
mento Eiver; through rich alluvial lands, yellow with 
ripening corn, or brown with harvested wheat, or 
amidst wide-reaching marshes of tule grass, — out into 
and across the broad circling bay of San Francisco ; 
under the shadows of Mount Diablo, representative 
of the coast mountains, — thus our journey was com- 
pleted, and we landed upon the long rolls of sand- 
hills that the Pacific Ocean has thrown up as a bar- 
rier to her own restless ambition, and over which 
San Francisco roughly but rapidly creeps into her 
position as the second great city of America. 

Seven weeks of steady journeying, — four thousand 
miles of travel in a direct line, within hail of a single 
parallel, east to west, and still the same people, the 



o 



14 OUR NEW WEST. 



same Nation ! Still the same Fourth of July, — for it 
was on its eve that we reached San Francisco; still 
the old flag, — the town was gay with its beauty that 
day; and best of all, still among hearts aglow with 
the same loyalty to and pride in the American Union, 
and the same purpose and the same faith for its 
future. Great the wonder grows with such experi- 
ence as ours at the extent of the Republic; but 
larger still our wonder at the mysterious but unmis- 
takable homogeneity of its people. San Francisco, 
looking westward to the Orient for greatness, cooling 
its summer heats with Pacific breezes, thinks the 
same thoughts, breathes the same patriotism, burns 
with the same desires, that inspire New York and 
Boston, whose outlook is eastward, and which seem 
to borrow their civilization with their commerce from 
Europe. Sacramento talks to-day of the same themes 
and with the same judgment as Hartford or Cleve- 
land or Chicago; while Nevada, over the mountains, 
almost out of the world, anticipates New England in 
her opinions, and makes up her verdict, while those 
close to the "Hub of the Universe" are looking over 
the testimony. 

It is this that is the greatest thing about our coun- 
try; that makes it the wonder of nations, the marvel 
of history, — the unity of its people in ideas and pur- 
pose; their quick assimilation of all emigration, — 
come it so far or so various; their simultaneous and 
similar currents of thought, their spontaneous, con- 
current formation and utterance of a united Public 
Opinion. This is more than extent of territory, 
more than wealth of resource, more than beauty of 



A FIKST LOOK AT SAN FKAjq^CISCO. 315 

landscape, more than variety of climate and produc- 
tions, more than marvelous material development, 
more than cosmopolitan populations, because it ex- 
ists in spite of them, and conquers them all by its 
subtle electricity. 

It was very interesting, indeed, to pass through 
and stand amid this civilization of half a generation ; 
to see towns that were not in 1850, now wearing an 
old and almost decaying air; to walk up and down 
the close built streets of the Pacific metropolis, and 
doubt whether they look most like Paris or New 
York, Brussels or Turin; to count the ocean steam- 
ers in the bay, or passing out through the narrow 
crack in the coast hills beautifully called the Golden 
Gate, and wonder as you finish your fingers where 
they all came from and are going to; to find an agri- 
culture richer and more various than that of Illinois; 
to feast the senses on a horticulture that marries the 
temperate and tropical zones, and makes of every yard 
and garden and orchard one immense eastern green- 
house; to observe a commerce and an industry that 
supply every comfort, minister to every taste, and fill 
the shops with every article of convenience and lux- 
ury that New York or Paris can boast of, and at 
prices as cheap as those of the former city to-day; 
to find homes more luxurious than are often seen in 
the Eastern States, and to be challenged unsuccess- 
fully to name the city whose ladies dress more mag- 
nificently than those of San Francisco. 

Yet none of this surprises me. I had large ideas 
of the Pacific Coast and its developments ; and I long 
ago gave up being surprised at ai y victories of the 



316 OUR NEW WEST. 

American mind and hand over raw American matter. 
Still, Nevada and California, with towns and cities of 
two to fifteen years' growth, yet to-day all full-armed 
in the elements of civilization, wanton with the luxu- 
ries of the senses, rich in the social amenities, sup- 
plied with churches and schools and libraries, even 
affecting high art, are wonderful illustrations of the 
rapidity and ease with which our people organize 
society and State, and surround themselves with all 
the comforts and luxuries of metropolitan life. The 
history of the world elsewhere offers no parallels to 
these. 



XYII. 

CALIFOENIA. 

The Extent and Variety of California's Surface — Her Two Ranges 
of Mountains — The Sacramento Basin — The Coast Valleys — The 
Forests of the Coast Range and the Sierra Nevadas — The Lakes of 
the State — The Lake District of the Continent — The Harbors on the 
Coast — The Bay of San Francisco — The Dry Climate of California — 
Amount of Rain in the Valleys and of Snow in the Mountains — The 
Contrasts with a Former Era — The Peculiarities of San Francisco's 
Climate — The Varieties of Heat and Cold to be had in the State — 
The Glory of Spring in California — The Grand Features of Nature 
in the State — Her Revolutions and Revelations in Nature and in 
Science — The Growth of California — Her Railroad System. 

It is well for us to dwell briefly upon the great 
natural features and characteristics of this foremost 
and representative State of the Pacific Coast, — Cali- 
fornia, — amid whose scenery and society we now 
passed a hurried but most delightful summer month. 
Seven hundred miles long on the Ocean, — from 32° 
to 42°, and representing the space from Charleston, 
B C, to Boston, Mass., on the Atlantic Coast ; near two 
hundred miles in width; with two great ranges of 
mountains running through its length, meeting and 
mingling both in the north and in the south, opening 
in the center for a wide plain-like valley or basin, and 



318 OUR NEW WEST. 

protecting uncounted smaller valleys in closer em- 
brace ; peaks running up to fifteen thousand feet of 
hight, — valleys on a level with the sea, one indeed 
below it; what wonder that it offers all climates^ all 
varieties of soil and production, all phases of nature, all 
elements of wealth ! The Coast Kange and the Sierra 
Nevadas are one in the south, become two through the 
central portion of the State, and mark and make its 
peculiar natural features, and again become one in the 
north, — still again in Oregon to part, and repeat on 
lesser scale to that State in the Willamette Yalley, 
the gift of the Sacramento to California. 

This great central valley, or Sacramento Basin, is 
about four hundred miles long and fifty wide. It 
is nearly down to the sea level, and is drained by 
two great rivers, the Sacramento coming down from 
the north, and the San Joaquin coming up from the 
south, meeting in the center and flowing out to- 
gether, with wide, delaying bays, through the Coast 
Eange to the Ocean. These main rivers draw their 
waters from numerous streams coming out of the 
Sierra Nevada Mountains, which, by a peculiarity 
that the Coast Range repeats, confine nearly all 
their overflow of water to their western slopes. As 
the Coast Mountains contribute little water to the 
Sacramento Basin, sending all their streams directly 
to the Ocean, so the Sierras are sparing of their gifts 
to the consuming desert lands of Nevada, and en- 
dow the interior of California with the bulk of their 
hoarded treasures of rain and snow. The Sacra- 
mento Basin is occasionally broken by terraces, and 
beautiful with frequent oak groves, but generally is 



THE TREES OF THE COAST RANGE. 319 

a level, treeless valley, with a deep, rich, alluvial 
soil, especially favorable for the smaller grains. In 
the north, the valley is studded with lonely peaks 
or Buttes rising two thousand feet above the dead 
level around. 

The Coast Mountains average only about half the 
hight of the Sierras, are more broken and irregular in 
line, and offer numerous valleys, strikingly picturesque 
in shape and surroundings, and abundantly rich with 
grass and trees, — the beautiful burr oak, with grace- 
ful, elm-like branches, distinguishing them, — and a 
soil for general culture. The wealth and beauty of 
the State lie very largely in these Coast Valleys. 
The hills about are for the most part bare of trees, 
but are beautiful in rounded outlines : thouo-h alono- 
the crests of many, and in the close canyons of 
nearly all are bountiful gifts of forest, — oaks and 
pines predominating, but the laurel, the cypress and 
the madrona alternating with their strange beauty. 
The redwood finds its home in the Coast Hills, also ; 
a fine-grained, light, soft wood, white and red in 
color, much used for building purposes, belonging to 
the general cedar family, and closely akin to the 
peculiarly Big Trees of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. 
The madrona is an open growth evergreen tree, of the 
laurel species, with oval leaves, pea-green beneath 
and dark and shining above, and a smooth bark 
that peels off every year, and when new is greenish 
yellow, and when mature a bright red. This and the 
manzanita bush are two of the more striking peculi- 
arities of the forest country of California to the visitor 
from the Eastern States. In bark and fruit, they bear 



320 OUR NEW WEST. 

a resemblance to each other, though one is a tree and 
the other a shrub ; and while the birds are fond of 
the berries of the madrona, the bears and the Indians 
live on those of the manzanita. 

The forests of the Sierra Nevadas are more various 
and abundant. There is a wide variety of oaks and 
pines and firs and cypresses and cedars, varying in 
character and size from the first faint foot-hills to the 
highest mountain tops. The sugar pines are, ex- 
cepting of course the distinctive mammoth trees, the 
larger and more remarkable of them all, and are dis- 
tinguished by huge cones like ornamental tassels 
hanging all over their tops. Not unfrequently these 
trees are three hundred feet high and eight or ten feet 
in diameter, and they furnish the finest timber of the 
Pacific Coast region. Some of the firs are also re> 
markable for size and beauty. The Eocky Mountains 
do not compare with the Sierras in the variety and 
majesty of their forest wealth; and the richness of 
the AUeghanies is poverty by the side of the Pacific 
States mountains in this respect. Fine timber grows 
as high as nine thousand and ten thousand feet in 
the Sierras. 

California is distinguished, also, for the wealth of 
water in reserve in her lakes, not only in and on the 
mountains, but under and around them. The Coast 
Range furnishes a few of these ; but the Sierras ofier 
at least two hundred in a distance of four hundred 
miles. Nearly all are of bright, pure, fresh waters ; 
the reservoirs of melting snows ; the sources of rivers 
wearing deep canyons in their eager course to the 
Sacramento and San Joaquin; the feeders of ditches 



THE PACIFIC COAST LAKE DISTRICT. 321 

that the miners have laid to their banks of gold, and 
that, outlasting this use, will minister to orchards and 
vineyards and gardens, and thus heal their former 
wounds of nature ; some sunk deep in rocky chasms; 
some enriching a wide, tender meadow, a rich summer 
home and a safe winter retreat for game, for stock 
and for Indians ; " some no bigger than the pettv tarns 
of the English hills, while others would float a navy, 
and can mimic the commotion of the sea." The north- 
eastern section of California is part of an especially 
grand lake country, destined perhaps to be the most 
distinguished in this respect of any portion of America, 
but now almost unknown. It extends over into 
southern and eastern Oregon, and includes part of 
northern Nevada and western Idaho. A portion of its 
waters flow down into the Sacramento ; other lakes are 
the sources of the Klamath Eiver, running through 
southern Oregon and northern California to the Pa- 
cific; others seek the Willamette; many pour east 
into the Snake, and more directly north into the 
Columbia; while still another portion of its lakes are 
the reservoirs of the rivers flowing east from the 
Sierra Nevada into the Great Basin, and have no out- 
let. Here, in a region bordering upon and chiefly 
north of the Great Interior Basin, a section of country 
from three hundred to ^Ye hundred miles square, is a 
perfect network of mountains, rivers, lakes and deserts, 
the home of several powerful Indian tribes, whom 
General Connor and General Crook have within a few 
years whipped into submission and a reservation, and 
across which a branch railroad from the main line in 
the Humboldt Yalley is likely to be speedily built to 
20 



322 OUE NEW WEST. 

the "Willamette Yalley in Oregon. Then its wealth of 
nature, especially its wealth of lakes^, will be revealed, 
and the claim for it, by the few who have traversed 
its imsettled wilds, of the name of the District of the 
Lakes, will be vindicated. 

Turning to the Ocean, California is generously, even 
curiously, endowed with fine, open harbors and inland 
bays. They can float in perfect safety a world's com- 
merce. There are along her coast four similar large 
inland bays, with entrances of from half a mile to a 
mile each, and of lengths varying from twelve to 
fifty miles. The best is that of San Francisco, which 
is eight miles broad and fifty long, and opens out 
farther inland into two other bays, one ten miles each 
way, and the other four miles by eight, and through 
which are received the grand flow of the rivers of 
the Sacramento Basin; the whole having an outlet 
into the Ocean, only a mile in width, but deep and 
well guarded; while all this wide wealth of inland 
sea is protected from the Ocean by a peninsula of 
high-rolling sand-hills six to fifteen miles in breadtL 
On the inner head of this peninsula, like an oriole 
balancing over the edge of his long, pocket nest 
below, stands San Francisco, looking down her far- 
stretching bay, looking around through the Golden 
Gate crack in the rocks to the Ocean, looking up, 
with wide, open eyes, over the grand expanse of 
waters that float down from the interior, and, meet- 
ing the tides of the Ocean, delay and spread about in 
very wantonness of space. Humboldt Bay, near the 
northern end of the State, and San Diego, near the 
southern, are the best of the similar bays; they are 



THE DRYNESS OF CALIFORNIA'S CLIMATE. 323 

indeed miniature reproductions of that of San Fran- 
cisco ; and the three, in place and in character, seem 
like a providential promise of the grand commercial 
future of the State. That of San Diego lies on the 
line of the Southern Pacific Railroad, and will be its 
direct ocean terminus. Humboldt Bay is the center 
of a rich lumber region, already greatly developed, 
and a railroad through the Coast Valleys will soon 
connect it with San Francisco. 

The distinctive feature of the climate of California 
is dryness. It represents if it does not lead all our 
New West in this peculiarity. Out of the Sierra 
Nevada Mountains, the fall of rain in all parts of the 
State is less than half the average of that in the 
States on the Atlantic Coast. It amounts in San 
Francisco and Sacramento to about twenty-one inches 
a year against forty to fifty in New England and New 
York. Then it all comes between November and 
June ; practically there is no rain in California through 
six months of the year; and for those six months, at 
least nineteen out of every twenty days are days of 
clear sunshine; while for the other six months, or 
rainy season, at least half the days are pleasant. 
Absolutely no rain falls at Sacramento in the three 
summer months ; while San Francisco is only able to 
report the thirteenth of an inch as the average of 
many years. Thunder and lightning storms are al- 
most unknown in California. The rain fall increases, 
however, as we ascend the slopes of the Sierras, and the 
excessive water supply from the rain and snow upon 
these mountains, compensates in some degree for the 
scant fall of the valleys and coast lines, and keeps 



324 OUR NEW WEST. 

the streams full the year through. Sixty feet of snow 
fell in one winter on the crest of the mountains near 
the railroad line; and the rain fall of the Sierras in 
the season of 1867-8 amounted to one hundred 
inches. There are exceptional years in the fall of 
rain in the lower and western parts of the State; 
thus in 1861-2, when there was a great flood, there 
were forty-five inches of rain at San Francisco in the 
four winter months ; and at the same time nearly one 
hundred inches in the foot-hills of the mountains, 
and, reducing snow to rain, over one hundred inches 
on the crest of the mountains. By contrast, some 
winters have passed without rain, and for eighteen 
months at one time the valleys and coast regions 
received no moisture. But that was before the present 
settlement and organization of the State. 

The tendency of the climate appears to be towards 
greater evenness, if not to an increase of moisture. 
The researches of Professor Whitney indicate that at 
one time the climate of all the Pacific region was as 
moist as it now is dry; that snow fell in the summer 
on the mountains, as it rarely or never does in this 
era, then producing and feeding glaciers, that the 
dryness of the climate at present forbids, and that, in 
fact, the now desert valleys of the Great Interior 
Basin of Utah and Nevada were, in the wet langsyne, 
vast inland seas! The surrounding mountains, now 
utterly bare of forest life, would then naturally have 
been clothed with the thickest and largest of trees. 
The contrast of present facts with this theory of the 
past is almost too great for the imagination to compre- 
hend. What mighty means created the revolution ? 



THE CLIMATE OF SAN FRANCISCO. 325 

Of course, with such extent of territory and such 
varieties and contrasts of elevation, all degrees of 
temperature, at every season of the year, are offered 
in California. The general facts are that the winters 
are warmer and the summers cooler than in the same 
latitudes and elevations at the East. The nights, even 
of the hottest days of the summer, are always cool, 
whether in mountain or valley, and it is very rare 
that a double blanket is not necessary as bed cover- 
ing in any part of the State. The summer sun is 
very fierce, even in the hills, but the atmosphere is so 
dry and always in such brisk motion that the heat is 
much less oppressive than the same degree of tem- 
perature in a moister climate with stiller air; while 
the nights are restoring and recompensing. 

Along the coast, and especially at San Francisco, 
the Ocean winds temper the summer heat and the 
winter cold most remarkably. The climate of San 
Francisco is almost an idiosyncrasy; it is probably 
the mildest, — that is, freest from excess of heat or 
cold, — and most even of any place in the world. The 
average temperature for the year is 54° ; the coldest 
month is January, which averages 49°; the warmest 
September, which averages 58°; while the other 
months range between these figures. Snow rarely 
falls, water as rarely freezes, in the Pacific metropolis 
during the winter, which is usually the more equable 
and pleasant season of the year there. The Ocean 
wind and mist pour in sharply in the summer after- 
noons, and, after a struggle with the dry atmosphere, 
which resists the attack bravely for a long time, they 
generally gain a partial victory, and make a frequently 



326 OUK NEW WEST. 

disagreeable evening. Such a contrast as 97° at noon 
and 46° in the evening has been known in San Fran- 
cisco in July ; but the usual range in July and August 
is from 50° to 70°. Woolen clothing of about the same 
warmth is needed constantly in that city, and no 
matter how warm the summer's morning may be, the 
stranger should never be tempted out for the day 
without his overcoat. For robust, vigorous bodies, 
there is no so favorable a climate as that of that city ; 
it preserves health and keeps up the tone and strength 
of the system, and secures more working days in the 
year than that of any other town in America or the 
world; but to a weak constitution, and for a quiet, 
sedentary life, it is too cold. The men like it better 
than the women do. The doctors say it is the easiest 
place to keep well, but the hardest to get well in; 
and they usually order their invalids into the country. 
But it is not difficult, as we have suggested, to find 
any shade of climate at short notice in California; by 
moving from one place to another, we may be in per- 
petual summer, or constant winter. The southern 
coast of California is softer than South Carolina ; the 
Colorado desert country in south-eastern California is 
warmer than New Orleans ; many a shaded spot upon 
the coast is an improvement over southern France or 
Italy; and the Sandwich Islands, which California 
holds to be a half-dependency, offer a climate to 
which all our tender invalids will soon be hastening, — 
the thermometer at Honolulu rising neither to 80° nor 
falling to 70° in any month of the year. The great 
Sacramento Basin escapes the San Francisco fogs and 
sea-breezes, and is four degrees colder in winter, and 



THE climate's EFFECTS UPON THE EACE. 327 

16° to 20° warmer in summer. The summer days 
are often quite hot there ; 100° is not an uncommon 
report from the thermometers in the shade ; but the 
cool nights are invariable. And would we have the 
tonic of frost, the High Sierras will give us fresh ice 
nearly every morning the summer through. A rail- 
road of two hundred miles^ running south-easterly 
from San Francisco, through Stockton, Sonora, the 
Mariposa Big Trees, the Yo Semite Valley, and reach- 
ing the tops of the Sierras at ten to twelve thousand 
feet, would offer any tolerable degree of heat and cold 
on every summer's day. 

But the evenness of the climate between the moun- 
tains and the sea in California, and the indescribable 
inspiration of the air, are the great features of life 
there, and the great elements in its health. There is 
a steady tone in the atmosphere, like draft of cham- 
pagne, or subtle presence of iron. It invites to labor, 
and makes it possible. Horses can travel more miles 
in a day than at the East; and men and women feel 
impelled to an unusual activity. 

It is too early yet to determine the permanent in- 
fluences of the climate of the Pacific Coast upon the 
race. The fast and rough life of the present genera- 
tion there is not sure basis for calculation. But the 
indications are that the human stock will be improved 
both in physical and nervous qualities. The children 
are stout and lusty. The climate invites and permits 
with impunity such a large open-air life, that it could 
hardly be otherwise. There is great freedom from 
lung difficulties ; but the weakness of the country is 
in nervous affections. 



328 OUR NEW WEST. 

The best season for seeing the coast mountains, 
valleys, and Sierra foot-hills of California is the early 
spring, from February to June. Then the rains are 
dwindling away to greet the summer drouth, and 
vegetation of all sorts comes into its freshest, richest 
life, and then, according to all testimony, is the most 
charming season for the stranger. All these August 
bare and russet hills, these dead and drear plains, are 
then alive with vigorous green, disputed, shaded and 
glorified with all the rival and richer colors. The 
wild flowers of California fairly carpet all the unculti- 
vated ground. No June prairie of Illinois, no garden 
of eastern culture can rival them. For luxuriance, 
for variety and depth and hight of color, for complete 
occupation of the hills and the plains, all agree that 
there is nothing like it to be seen anywhere else in 
nature. Then, too, the trees are clean and fresh ; the 
live oak groves are enriched to brilliant gardens by 
the flowers and grass below; and the pine and fir 
forests hold majestic yet tender watch over all the 
various new life of the w^oods. But in these spring 
months of fresher nature, before the sun sears and 
the dust begrimes, the interesting regions of the higher 
Sierras are denied us; and most pleasure travelers 
will visit California in mid-summer, from June to 
September. Then the paths to the Big Tree groves, 
to the Yo Semite Valley, and to the lakes on the 
mountain tops, are open and inviting; and as the 
flowers and grass and trees of those regions are at 
that season condensing their spring and summer 
growth, we shall find there some compensation for the 
decayed nature of the lower regions of the State. 



NATUEE's AI^OMALIES in CALIFORNIA. 329 

While the novelties of climate, the strange and won- 
derful variety of surface and form in nature, the com- 
bination of the beautiful and the anomalous, the 
fascinating and the repulsive, that California every- 
where presents, arouse every enthusiasm and excite 
every interest, it is to the student of science that she 
seems the most original and proves the most engaging. 
He finds here not only revolutions in forms and facts, 
but revolutions in theory, and sees that he must begin 
anew to observe and recreate the science of the world's 
history. There are evidences of glaciers that surpassed 
those of Switzerland ; there are proofs of volcanic revo- 
lutions that utterly changed the form of the Continent, 
and the nature of vegetable, animal and human life 
upon it ; where these mountains now rise were once 
grand rivers ; out of their depths have been dug the 
bones of a gigantic race that lived farther back in the 
ages than human life was ever before known, or 
perhaps suspected by the most audacious theorists ; 
the State has diluvial deposits fifteen hundred feet 
deep, and granitic mountains twelve to fifteen thou- 
sand feet high, and others of lava and slate and meta- 
morphic rock of nearly equal hight; silent craters are 
open upon many of her highest peaks ; where Switz- 
erland has one mountain thirteen thousand feet hio-h 
California has a hundred ; she has a waterfall fifteen 
times as high as Niagara ; she has lakes so thin that 
a sheet of paper will sink in their waters ; others so 
voracious that they will consume a man, body, boots 
and breeches, within thirty days ; she has inexhaust- 
ible mines of gold, quicksilver and copper ; she keeps 
a miniature hell in blast as warning to the wicked 



330 OUR NEW WEST. 

sons of men ; she has dreary deserts with poisonous 
waters, where life faints ; she has plains and valleys 
that will grow more wheat and vegetables than any 
other equal space in the whole Nation ; — in short, her 
nature is as boundless in its fecundity and variety, as it 
is strange and startling in its forms ; while her men are 
the most enterprising and audacious ; her women the 
most self-reliant and the most richly dressed ; and her 
children the stoutest, sturdiest and the sauciest of any 
in all the known world ! 

The future of a State, of such various and bounds 
less gifts ; so favorably located with reference to the 
world's commerce; so inviting to enterprise, so en- 
couraging to labor, can hardly be measured by any 
imagination. She has now a population of half a 
million, of whom nearly one-third are held by her com- 
mercial city. In twenty years, the whole extent of 
her life, she has both developed and subdued gold- 
mining, outgrown its vicissitudes and conquered its 
dangers ; created an agriculture hardly second to that 
of any State in the Union, and twice the value of her 
mines; and organized manufactures and commerce 
that are each of equal value with her mineral produc- 
tion. The world never witnessed elsewhere such 
growth in all the elements of wealth and power and 
social and political order. 

Active now at all points, and increasing rapidly in 
wealth and population, California is fast perfecting 
wide-reaching railroad connections, both within and 
without the State. Besides the main Pacific Eailroad, 
that stretches across her central borders, from Nevada 
to the Ocean, a distance of nearly three hundred 



THE EAILROADS OF CALIFORNIA. 331 

miles, she has an eighty mile line due south from San 
Francisco, the beginning of the Southern Pacific Eoad; 
a second short track from San Francisco Bay to Sacra- 
mento, and thence on north into the Sacramento Basin, 
reaching out towards Oregon ; several short roads into 
the rich valleys among the coast mountains and into 
the foot-hills of the Sierra Nevada, all tributary to both 
Sacramento and San Francisco ; — in total, at least six 
hundred, perhaps seven hundred, miles of railroad 
track will be laid and in use within the State before 
the year 1869 closes. Yery soon all her central sec- 
tions will be thus bound to her political and commer- 
cial capitals ; and but two or three years at the most 
can pass before her remotest south and her remotest 
north, — her tropic and her arctic regions, the orange 
groves of Los Angelos and the snows of Shasta, — will 
be brought within a day's ride of her temperate 
central life. Five years ago, her railroads were less 
than one hundred miles in all; and ten years ago 
the only winter communication California had with 
Nevada was by a single express messenger, who 
traveled on foot with snow-shoes, and whose claims 
for pay for the service are not yet settled ! 



XVIII. 

SAN FRANCISCO. 

The Mysterious Fascination of " Friscoe" — An Early Error in Laying 
Out the City — The Winds and Real Estate — The Grand Views from 
the City's Hights — The Garden- Yards of the Town — The Peculiari- 
ties of its Climate — The Anomalies and Contradictions of its Social 
and Business Life — The Smartness of the Old Californians — The 
Women of San Francisco — A Scandal-Making^ and Scandal-Loving 
Town — The Feminine Lunch Parties — The Tempering Influences 
of Time and the Eailroad — Hotels and Restaurants — The " What 
Cheer House" — The Wells-Fargo Express Company — The Markets 
of San Francisco — Fruit, Fish, Flour and Meat — Prices Here and 
in the East — Buildings and Earthquakes — The Excursion to the 
Cliff — The Seals and the Pelicans — Morals, Education and Religion 
— The Dominance of Northern and National Sentiments — School- 
Houses and Churches and Ministers — The Commerce and Manufac- 
tures of San Francisco — Interesting Statistics — The Certainties of 
the Future — London, New York and San Francisco Contrasted. 

"Friscoe/' or "the Bay," as the miners in the 
Mountains and over in Nevada familiarly call their 
pet city by the sea, holds a first place in all the life 
of the Pacific Coast. Capital and commerce center 
here ; it is the social focus and the intellectual 
inspiration, not only of California, but of Nevada, 
Oregon and Idaho as well; an annual visit here is 
the one bright spot in the miner's desolate life ; and 
scold they ever so much at its pretensions and its 



VIEWS IN SAN FEANCISCO. 




Part of the Bay, Mare Island, San Francisco. 




Montgomery Street, San Francisco. 




Market Street, San Francisco. 



THE SAND-HILL SITE OF SAN FRANCISCO. 335 

absorbing influenceSj all the people west of the Eocky 
Mountains feel a peculiar personal pride in San Fran- 
cisco, andj if they would confess it, look forward to no 
greater indulgence in life, no greater reward in death, 
than to come hither. 

Why this fascination it is not so easy to see or say. 
It is like the magnetism of an ugly or very improper 
person. The town sprawls roughly over the coarse 
sand-hills that the Ocean has rolled and blown up, and 
is still rolling and blowing up, from out its waters. 
The business streets are chiefly on made land under 
the hills and by the bay. Up and out from these, the 
streets roll on irregular grades over the hills to the 
homes of the population. The early comers, having 
begun wrongly on the American straight line and 
square system of laying out the city, are tugging 
away at these hills with tireless energy, to reduce 
the streets to a grade that man and horse can ascend 
and descend without double collar and breechino; 
help ; but there is w^ork in it for many a generation 
to come. They might have better accepted the situa- 
tion at the first, made Nature engineer and architect 
in chief, and circled the hills with their streets and 
buildings, instead of undertaking to go up and then 
through them. Such a flank attack w^ould have been 
much more successful and economical, and given them 
a vastly more picturesque city. Boston had the ad- 
vantage of cow-paths to establish its streets by ; but 
no estray cow ever visited these virgin sand-hills of 
San Francisco, as innocent of verdure as a babe of 
sorrow or vice. Many of the streets up and over 
the hills are so steep that it is impossible to drive 



336 OUR NEW WEST. 

upon them ; and where, in the progress of shovel and 
cart, they are cut down, we shall see houses perched 
up a hundred feet or more in the air on the ancient 
grades of nature. 

Wherever the hill-sides and tops are fastened with 
houses or pavements, or twice daily seduced with 
water, there the foundations are measurably secure, 
and the deed of the purchaser means something ; but 
all elsewhere, all the open lots and unpaved paths 
are still undergoing the changing and creative proc- 
ess. The daily winds from the near Ocean swoop up 
the soil in one place and deposit it in another in great 
masses, like drifts of snow. We shall often find a 
suburban street blocked up with fresh sand ; the 
owner of vacant lots needs certainly to pay them 
daily visit in order to swear to title ; and the chance 
anyway is that, between one noon and another, he 
and his neighbor will have changed properties to 
an indefinite depth. Incidental to all this, of course, 
are clouds of sand and dust through all the resi- 
dence and open parts of the city, making large mar- 
ket for soap and clothes-brushes, and putting neat 
housekeepers quite in despair for their furniture. 
Naturally enough, there is a looseness on the sub- 
ject of cleanliness that would shock your old- 
fashioned New England housewives. 

But then, as compensation, the winds give health, 
— keeping the town fresh and clean; and the hills 
offer wide visions of bay and river, and islands and 
sister hills, — away out and on with varying life of 
shipping, and manufactures, and agriculture ; and, 
hanging over all, a sky of azure with broad horizons. 



THE OPEiq" CONSERYATORIES. 337 

Oceanward is Lone Mountain Cemetery, coverino- one 
of the hills with its scrawny, low-running, live oak 
shrub tree, and its white monuments, conspicuous 
among which are the erections to those martyrs to 
both Western and Eastern civilization and progress, 
— Broderick, the mechanic and senator, James Kino- 
of William, the editor, and Baker, the soldier. Here 
is the old Mission quarter, there the soldiers' camp, 
yonder, by the water, the bristling fort, again the 
conspicuous and generous Orphan Asylum, monu- 
ment of the tenderness and devotion of the women 
of the city, and to the left of that still, the two 
Jewish Cemeteries, each with its appropriate and 
tasteful burial chapel. No other American city 
holds in its very center such sweeping views of 
itself and its neighborhood ; and every visitor must 
make sure to secure them from the best points 
within and around the city • they are in themselves 
revelations of the future Pacific Coast Empire, cer- 
tainly of San Francisco's security as its metropolis. 

Then the little yards around the dwellings of the 
prosperous, even of those of moderate means, are 
made rich with all the verdure of a greenhouse, 
with only the cost of daily watering. The most 
delicate of evergreens ; roses of every grade and 
hue^ fuchsias vigorous and high as lilac bushes; 
nasturtiums sweeping over fences and up house 
walls ; flowering vines of delicate quality, imknown 
in the East ; geraniums and salvias, pansies and 
daisies, and all the kindred summer flowers of New 
York and New England, grow and blossom under 
these skies throughout the whole year, — the same 



338 OUR NEW WEST. 

in December and January as in June and August, — 
with a richness and a profusion that are rarely at- 
tained by any out-door culture in the East. The 
public aqueducts furnish water, though at consider- 
able expense, and pipes convey and spread it in fine 
spray all over yard and garden. The result is, every 
man's door-yard in the city is like an Eastern con- 
servatory; and little humble cottages smile out of 
this city of sand-hills and dust, as green and as yel- 
low, and as red and as purple, as gayest of garden 
can make them. 

San Francisco weather, as has been intimated, is 
altoo-ether original; you cannot palm off old Thomas's 
almanac on the weather question, — "calculated for 
Boston, but equally applicable to any other meridi- 
an," — in this town. There is nothing like it, either 
here on the Pacific Coast, or elsewhere so far as 
Bayard Taylor has traveled, or Fitzhugh Ludlow 
imagined in "Hasheesh." The anomaly is very 
much because the town is constantly " in the draft." 
While elsewhere, along shore, the Coast Hills un- 
interruptedly break the steady north-west breeze 
from the Ocean in summer, here they open just 
enough to let out the waters of the Sacramento 
Eiver and San Francisco Bay, and let in like a tide 
of escape steam the Ocean breeze and mists. When 
winter comes, the wind changes to south-east, and 
blows to softer scale, and between showers, — for then 
comes the rain, — the sky is clearer and the air balmier 
• than in summer. Thus the people of San Francisco 
boast of their winters, and apologize for their sum- 
mers ; and invalids need to flee away from town in 



THE SMART MEN OF SAN FRANCISCO. 339 

the latter season. The ladies wear furs in July and 
August ; every man, not lined with a patent air-tight 
coal-stovC;, never ventures out without his overcoat ; 
and many a day of our August visit did it feel as if 
the weather was coming down upon us with a snow- 
storm. 

Kindred anomalies and contrasts force themselves 
upon the observant visitor in the business, social and 
intellectual life of San Francisco. Some of the finest 
qualities are mingled with others that are both shabby 
and " shoddy." There is sharp, full development of 
all material powers and excellencies ; wealth of prac^ 
tical quality and force ; a recklessness and rioting 
with the elements of prosperity ; much dash, a cer- 
tain chivalric honor combined with carelessness of 
word, of integrity, of consequence; a sort of gam- 
bling, speculating, horse-jockeying morality, — born 
of the uncertainties of mining, its sudden hights, its 
equally surprising depths, and the eager haste to be 
rich, — that all require something of a re-casting of 
relationships, new standards, certainly new charities, 
in order to get the unaccustomed mind into a state 
of candor and justice. People, who know they are 
smart in the East, and come out to California think- 
ing to find it easy wool-gathering, are generally apt 
to go home shorn. Wall Street can teach Mont- 
gomery Street nothing in the way of "bulling" and 
"bearing," and the "corners" made here require both 
quick and long breath to turn without faltering. 

Men of mediocre quality are no better off in San 
Francisco than in older cities and States. Ten or 
fifteen years of stern chase after fortune, among the 
21 



340 OUK NEW WEST. 

mines and mountains and against the new nature of 
that original country, has developed men here with 
a more various and toughening experience in all the 
temporalities of life, and a wider resource for fighting 
all sorts of " tigers/' than you can easily find among 
the present generation in the Eastern States. Nearly 
all the men of means in California to-day have held 
long and various struggle with fortune, failing once, 
twice or thrice, and making wide wreck, but buckling 
on the armor again and again, and trying the contest 
over and over. So it is throughout the Pacific Coast 
States ; I have hardly met an old emigrant of '49 and 
'50, who has not told me of vicissitudes of fortune, of 
personal trials, and hard work for bread and life, that, 
half-dreamed of before emigrating, he would never 
have dared to encounter, and which no experience 
of persons in like position in life in the East can 
parallel. 

In consequence partly of all this training, and 
partly of the great interests and the wide regions to 
be dealt with, the men we find at the head of the 
great enterprises of the Pacific Coast have great 
business power, — a wide practical reach, a boldness, 
a sagacity, a vim, that can hardly be matched any- 
where in the world. London and New York and 
Boston can furnish men of more philosophic^ and 
theories, — men who have studied business as a sci- 
ence as well as practiced it as a trade,— but here 
in San Francisco are the men of acuter intuitions 
and more daring natures ; who cannot tell you why 
they do so and so, but who will do it with n force 
that commands success. Illustrations of such men. 



THE TONE OF ^^ SOCIETY. 341 

and their bold and comprehensive operations may be 
seen in the Bank of California, — the financial king of 
the Pacific States, with ^Ye millions of capital, — the 
California and Oregon steam navigation companies, 
controlling the inland navigation of these two States, 
the great woolen mills and machine shops of San 
Francisco, the Wells-Fargo Express and Stage Com- 
pany, in the mining companies, especially on the 
Comstock lode, in the Central Pacific Kailroad Com- 
pany, even in the large farms of the interior valleys, 
and in the wheat dealing ^^ rings" of the city. 

"Society," too, is audacious and original, though 
somewhat difficult of characterization, in this repre- 
sentative town of the Pacific Coast. It holds in 
chaos as yet all sorts of elements 5 the very best, 
and the very worst, and all between. There is much 
of New York in it, much of St. Louis and Chicago, 
and a good deal that is original and local ; born of 
wide separation from the centers of our best social 
civilization ; of the dominating materialism and mas- 
culineism of all life in San Francisco ; of comparative 
lack of homes and families and their influences; of 
the considerable European and Asiatic elements min- 
gling in its unsettled civilization. There are probably 
more bachelors, great lusty fellows, who ought to be 
ashamed of themselves, living in hotels or in " lodg- 
ings " in this town, than in any other place of its size 
in the world. There is want of femininity, spirituality 
in the current tone of the town ; lack of reverence 
for women ; fewer women to reverence, than our 
Eastern towns are accustomed to. You hear more 
than is pleasant of private scandals , of the vanity 



342 OUR NEW WEST. 

and weakness of women ; of tlie infidelity of wives. 
" It is the cussedest place for women/' said an ob- 
servant Yankee citizen, some two or three years from 
home, and not forgetful yet of mother, sister and 
cousin, — " a town of men and taverns and boarding- 
houses and billiard-saloons." 

Yet there seem to be plenty of women, — such as 
they are ; and Montgomery Street will offer the 
promenader as many pretty and striking faces, per- 
haps more in proportion, than Washington Street or 
Broadway. But the dominating quality, like mercy, 
is not strained ; it savors of the mannishness^ the 
materialism, the "fastness" and the " loudness " of the 
country; and, paradoxical as it may appear, by con- 
trast with Eastern society, the men seem of a higher 
grade than the women, — better for men than the lat- 
ter for women. Nor is this inconsistent with reason; 
the men, dealing with great practical necessities and 
duties, are less harmed, on the whole, by the dominant 
materialism of life here than the women, whose press- 
ing responsibilities are lower and fewer ; — as a fine, 
delicate blade is more roughened in cutting the way 
through bramble and brush than a tough and broader 
edge. 

All which is not only natural, but inevitable. In 
all new countries, where the first fight is for life and 
wealth with rough nature, the masculine quality 
must ever be dominant; and the feminine elements 
must be influenced by it, more than they influence it 
in turn. The senses rule the spirit. All civilization, 
all progress tends to the increase of the feminine 
element in our nature, and in life ; contrast the cen- 



HOW THE LADIES DRESS. 343 

turies, and we see it creeping in everywhere, in men 
and women alike, in religion, in intellectual culture, 
in art, in social intercourse, — softening, refining, hal- 
lowing, — the atmosphere of all modern life pictures. 
Women, who possess and represent this blossom of our 
civilization, are by no means wanting in California,^ — 
no more perfect specimens have we ever met any- 
where ; tender, tasteful, true ; and gaining in aggre- 
gate influence over society day by day ; but yet not 
to-day representing, or, at least, controlling, what is 
called " society." 

The ladies generally dress in good taste. Paris is 
really as near San Francisco as New York, and there 
are many foreign families here. But the styles are 
not so subdued as in our Eastern cities ; a higher or 
rather louder tone prevails ; rich, full colors, and sharp 
contrasts ; the startling effects that the Parisian demi- 
monde seeks, — these are seen dominating in balls and 
the public streets. In costliness of costume, too, there 
is apparent rivalry among the San Francisco ladies. 
Extravagance is lamented as a common weakness 
among them, and leading, where fortune is so fickle 
as here, to many a worse one often. Perhaps in no 
other American city would the ladies invoice so high 
per head as in San Francisco, when they go out to 
the opera, or to party, or ball. Their point lace is 
deeper, their moire antique stiffer, their skirts a trifle 
longer, their corsage an inch lower, their diamonds 
more brilliant, — and more of them, — than the cos- 
mopolite is likely to find elsewhere. 

Another "society" item, and we will pass on. The 
common dining hour being five or six o'clock, the 



344 OUR NEW WEST. 

women are denied the esthetic, gossiping tea-party, so 
peculiar to New England. The "lunch party" is their 
substitute, and a famous feature of feminine social life 
it is. The hour is from high noon to two o'clock, 
when the men are busy at their work, and the women 
have this dissipation all to themselves. Richer and 
more various as a meal are the lunches than the teas 
they substitute ; the eating and attendant gossiping 
often absorb a whole afternoon, leaving the particle 
pants appetiteless, it is true, for the family dinner, but 
with what compensating material for garnishing the 
meal for the household ! We have never even so 
much as seen through a crack in the door one of these 
California feminine lunch parties; but confidential 
confessions lead us to give them a high place in the 
social features and distractions of the life of the town. 
And yet for high art in the line of the delicate but 
industrious scandal-mongering and the virtuous plot- 
ting against masculine authority, that we are wont to 
attribute to these exclusive gatherings of our dear 
sisters, it does still seem to me that the New England 
conjunction of twilight and green hyson are much 
more favorable. Doubtless, these California Eves are 
bolder in their habits, as becomes their life and the 
grosser evils they are the victims of; but how much 
more daintily and delicately the stiletto and the 
tongue, the knitting-needle and the eye, can do their 
sweet work under a little softening of the shadows 
and the inspiration of hot tea on a stomach that has 
already done its duty for the day 1 

But time tempers, and association softens, this re- 
dundancy and coarseness of fresh life in San Fran- 



THE HOTELS AND RESTAURANTS. 345 

ciscOo Already the Railroad and the telegraph carry 
its force back to the Atlantic cities, and bring in 
return the self-control and steadiness of an older 
society and a riper civilization. Henceforth San 
Francisco will rapidly rival our Eastern cities in the 
steadiness and certainty of business operations, and 
in the refinements and amenities of social life. The 
Raih^oad is the great channel for the elements of order 
and elevation to come in. It introduces and fosters 
the things that make for peace. Praying for its con- 
struction, forecasting its influence, Rev. Horatio Steb- 
bins well said in one of the San Francisco pulpits 
during our visit of 1865 : — 

*' Whatever promotes the assimilation of mankind, whatever brings 
nations and peoples into communion, thus supplementing each other in 
the completeness of humanity, is a step in the advancing kingdom of 
God. This earth is a musical instrument not yet fully strung. When 
every Coast shall be peopled, every mountain barrier overcome, every 
abyss spanned, and the peoples of the earth shall flow together as in 
prophetic vision to the mountain of the Lord's house, and harmony of 
common good shall persuade the lion and the lamb ; when laws shall be 
greater than conflict, and order than violence ; when manners shall en- 
robe the races as a garment of beauty, and religion conserve society as 
virtue conserves the soul, — then this earth shall give its sound in har- 
mony with the Infinite intelligence, and the Providential purpose shall 
gleam from every summit as the beacon lights of mankind," 

In many of the materialities of life, — in excellence 
of hotels and restaurants, in facilities of inter-com- 
munication, in all ministrations to the sensuous wants 
of human nature, — San Francisco and California al- 
ready set many an example to older communities. 
The hotels of the city are the equals of the very best 
of the Atlantic States ^ the restaurants the superiors. 



346 OUR NEW WEST. 



The European habit of living in lodgings and taking 
meals at restaurants is very much in vogue in San 
Francisco, and has stimulated the character and equal- 
ized the prices of the latter. A dinner of several 
courses with wine is served in admirable style after 
the French form at the best of them for one dollar 
and a half; while a like meal in one of the fashion- 
able eating-houses of New York and Boston would 
cost four or five dollars. Among the hotels, the 
" What Cheer House " is a California peculiarity ; it 
is what would be called a second or third class hotel, 
but serves excellent meals and lodgings at fifty cents 
each; and grew up to popularity and fortune under the 
patronage of the miners, who, when they come into 
town from their distant camps and cabins, are not 
inclined to be satisfied with anything second-rate in 
the way of creature comforts, though somewhat in- 
different to mere "style." The "What Cheer" has 
an especial ofiice for receiving clothes to be washed 
and mended, a well chosen popular library with ^yq 
thousand volumes, full files of newspapers and maga- 
zines, an extensive and valuable cabinet of minerals, 
and a beautiful collection of stuffed birds, all for the 
accommodation and entertainment of its guests. Its 
reading-room is generally well filled with plain, rough- 
looking men, each with book or newspaper in hand. 
The rule of the establishment is for every guest to 
buy a supply of tickets for meals and lodgings on his 
arrival, at the uniform rate of fifty cents each, and 
the proprietor redeems with cash what have not been 
used up when the customer leaves. 

Another illustration of how well certain asrencies 



THE WELLS & FARGO EXPRESS. 347 

of life's convenience are organized in this country is 
the Wells & Fargo Express Company. Tt is our East- 
ern express company perfected and glorified. It 
extends to every village, almost to every mining 
camp in all these Pacific States and Territories. It 
anticipates, almost supersedes, the government in 
carrying letters ; it does errands of every sort and to 
every place; it exchanges gold and greenbacks; it 
buys and sells gold and silver in the rough ; it owns 
all the principal stage lines of the interior; it brings 
to market all the productions of the gold and silver 
mines; and, in brief, is the ready companion of 
civilization, the omnipresent friend and universal 
agent of the pioneer, his errand-man, post-boy, and 
banker. The first three establishments set up in a 
new mining town are a restaurant, a billiard saloon, 
and a Wells & Fargo office. With these three, its 
first stage of civilization is complete. In the carryino- 
of letters, this company has proven how, even in a 
new country, it is practicable for the government to 
abandon the post-office business without any very 
great inconvenience to the people. For years, it car- 
ried many more letters on the Pacific Coast than the 
government did; for, though it first paid the govern- 
ment postage on every one, and then added its own 
charges, the certainty and promptness of its carriage 
and delivery, together with its appearance on the 
ground before the representatives of the post-office, 
made this department of its agency very much in 
favor with the public. At all its offices are letters 
received and delivered as in a government post-office, 
and in a single year the number of letters going 



348 OUR NEW WEST. 

through the hands of the express company was nigh 
upon three millions. In this and in many other ways, 
the express agency of the Pacific Coast is far in 
advance, in usefulness and omnipresence, of that of 
the East. 

The food markets of San Francisco will cerj^ainly 
be a delight, perhaps a surprise, to the stranger. In 
supply, in variety, and in perfection of quality, — the 
results of the various climates, and the fruitful waters 
and soils of the State, — the markets of no other city 
ajDproach them. Here are spring, summer and fall 
vegetables of every kind, all the time, and of the largest 
size and healthiest growth ; here strawberries may be 
bought twelve months in the year ; here, for months 
in succession, are grapes of many varieties from 
two to twelve cents a pound. Black Hamburghs, 
Muscats and Sweetwaters at the higher price ; here 
are apples from Northern California and Oregon, 
pears, figs, peaches, apricots, nectarines, plums and 
blackberries from the neighboring valleys, oranges, 
lemons, limes and bananas from the Southern coun- 
ties, all in fullest perfection of form and ripeness 
and at moderate prices by the pound, — for fruits 
and vegetables are uniformly sold by weight ; then, 
too, here is flour at half Eastern prices ; and salmon 
throughout the year at ten to twenty cents a pound, 
with smelts, soles, herrings, cod, bass, shrimps, every 
treasure of the sea; while the variety of game is 
unequalled, and meats of all kinds are at least as 
cheap, and often cheaper, than in New England and 
Middle State towns. The materials for living are 
in as rich supply, indeed, as the art of their prep- 



LIVING AND WAGES IN SAN FKANCISCO. 349 

aration is perfected ; and it will not take the thrifty 
mind long to calculate that, so far as food is con- 
cerned, a family can be supported more cheaply in 
San Francisco than in New York or Boston. The 
prices quoted are of course specie, — for the Pacific 
States have persistently refused greenbacks and bank 
bills ; but wages and profits are also in specie, and are 
higher, generally, than currency wages and profits in 
Eastern cities. But the fastidious Yankee, who never 
forgets his home or his mother's pies and preserves, 
insists that the quality of the fruit and vegetables is 
below that of the productions of the orchards and 
gardens of the Middle States and New England, — 
that there is just a lower flavor and delicacy in 
them ; a sacrifice of piquancy and richness to per- 
fection of shape and bulk. It may be this is only 
an illustration of that great moral truth that Burton 
used to impress upon his Chambers Street Theater 
audiences, " that the sassengers of infancy never re- 
turn j" and yet I am inclined to believe there is 
really something in it. 

It is not easy to draw any very exact comparisons 
between wages and profits, and the expenses of living, 
in San Francisco and in the Eastern cities. Prices 
are fickle now everywhere; and a comparison true 
to-day would be false to-morrow by reason of changes 
in the value of money, always going on at the present 
time, and always impending. Food is certainly much 
cheaper, on the whole, in San Francisco than in cor- 
responding cities of the East ; and wages and profits 
are as undoubtedly higher. But there is a ' rapid 
tendency to equalization ; and the difference in favor 



350 OUR NEW WEST. 

of the Pacific Coast will gradually but speedily fade 
away. At present the gold or silver dollar buys 
perhaps twenty per cent, more in San Francisco than 
the paper dollar in New York, and can be got with 
say twenty per cent, less labor. But, on the other 
hand, there is less settled economy here than there. 
The free and easy, reckless extravagance of early 
California times is not wholly outgrown ; in luck to- 
day a man drinks champagne and flaunts his jewelry 
at the Occidental; while, fortvme frowning, to-morrow 
he is sponging his dinners and his drinks from his 
friends, and takes a fifty-cent lodging at the What 
Cheer House. Large profits are generally demanded 
by the traders; nothing is sold for less than "two 
bits" (twenty-five cents); and a fifty-cent piece is the 
lowest coin that it is respectable to carry, or throw to 
the man who waters your horse. At the best hotels, 
the Occidental and Cosmopolitan, the price is three 
dollars a day in gold, which is cheaper than the 
four dollars and a half currency charged by the 
fashionable hotels of Boston and New York. A 
"drink" at an aristocratic San Francisco bar is two 
bits (twenty-five cents); at a more democratic estab- 
lishment one bit (ten cents). There is no coin in use 
less than a dime (ten cents) ; one of these answers as 
" a bit;" two of them will pass for two bits, or twenty- 
five cents; but the man who often offers two dimes 
for a quarter of a dollar is voted a " bummer." Kents 
and real estate are both high and advancing, and 
are probably above those of any Eastern city save 
New York. 

The business portions of the city are handsome and 



excursio:n" to the oceak. 351 

substantial with brick and stone. There are a few 
distinctively fine structures as the Bank of California 
and the halls of the Mercantile and Young Men's 
Christian Associations. Several churches are also 
attractive for size and architectural pretensions. But 
the earthquakes, to which the city and the coast are 
always exposed, and which within a few years have 
frequently visited them, admonish the citizens to 
build strong and low, even for business purposes ; 
and, with the greater abundance and less price of 
lumber as a building material, lead them more to 
detached and w^ooden dwellings than is common in 
large cities. Brick tenement blocks are compara- 
tively rare. Most of the homes are separate cot- 
tages, large and pretentious with the few, small and 
neat and simple with the many. The wide reach of 
the sand-hills and intervening valleys, that make up 
the peninsula on w^hich the city is located, encour- 
ages this independent, spreading habit of building ; 
and the extent of the street railroads of the city, 
about twenty-seven miles in all, shows w^iat a large 
area has already been covered by its population. 

We shall be of a very indifferent sort of persons, 
and have no friends, to escape during the first week 
of a visit to San Francisco an invitation to drive out 
to the Cliff House for breakfast and a sight of the 
sea-lions. This is the one special pet dissipation of 
the city, the very trump card in its hospitality. A 
night among the Chinese houses and gambling holes 
is reserved as a choice tit-bit for the pruriently curi- 
ous few; but the Cliff and the seals are for all ages 
and conditions of men and women. And, indeed, it 



S52 OUR NEW WEST. 

is a very pleasant, exhilarating excursion. A drive 
of five or six miles, along a hard-made road over the 
intervening sand-hills, brings us out to the broad Pa- 
cific, rolling in and out, " wide as waters be." We 
strain our eyes for Sandwich Islands and China, — 
they are right before us ; no object intervenes, and 
we feel that we ought to see them. Just at the 
right, around the corner, is the Golden Gate ; and 
vessels are passing in and out the Bay. A rare cliff 
rock places us beyond the sands, within the Ocean ; 
and a fine hotel on its very edge offers every hospi- 
tality, — at a price. Out upon half a dozen fragment- 
ary rocks, like solid castles moored in the Ocean below 
and before, are the seals and the pelicans. The rocks 
are covered and alive with them. You remember Bar- 
num's seals at New York and Boston, don't you ? — 
great sleek and slimy amphibious calves, — all bodies, 
small heads and short, webby feet, — bobbing up and 
down in their water tanks, and almost making you 
weep with their large, liquid human eyes, like a 
hungering, sorrowing woman's ? Well, here are their 
native water and rock ; from these homes they were 
stolen away, and here by twenties and fifties you see 
their relations. Crawling up from the water, awk- 
wardly and blunderingly like babe at its first creep- 
ing, they spread themselves in the sun all over the 
rocks, twenty and thirty feet high sometimes, and 
lie there as if comatose ; anon raising the head to 
look about and utter a rough, wide-sounding bark; 
often two or three, provoked by a fresh squatter on 
their territory, get into combat, and strike and bite 
languidly at one another, barking and grumbling 



THE SEALS AND THE PELICAN. 353 

meanwhile like long-lunged dogs; and again, tired 
of discord or weary of heaven, they plunge, with 
more of spring than they do anything else, back into 
the deep sea. An opera-glass brings them close to 
us upon the hotel piazza, and there is a singular fas- 
cination in sitting and watching their performances. 
They are of all sizes from fifty pounds weight up to 
two hundred and three hundred; and the biggest, 
burliest and most pugnacious one of all is known as 
"Ben Butler." Sea gulls and pelicans, the latter 
huge and awkward in flight as turkeys, dispute pos-* 
session of the rocks ; resting in great flocks, or with 
loud flaps flying around and around, overlooking the 
water for passing food. Weary of these sights, we 
seek neighboring charming coves among the rocks 
below, and lie there out of the wind, watching the 
rolling waves rising and breaking over the island 
rocks, and sweeping in up the seducing sands to toy 
with our feet. And again, mounting horse or car- 
riage, we ride swiftly and smoothly along the neigh- 
boring broad beach of hard sand for several miles ; 
the unbroken, wdde-reaching, long-rolling Ocean is 
before our sight ; and our horse's feet dance in merry 
race with the incoming surf; — and thus solemnly 
awed with ocean expanse, alternate with dainty titil- 
lation of amused senses, we close our charming half 
day at the Clifll We ride back to town by another 
and longer road, see its proud Orphan Asylum and its 
old Mission grounds on the way, and appreciate how 
much room for growth these wide-rolling sand-hills 
afford. 

In affairs of public morals, and education and re- 



354 OUR NEW WEST. 

ligion^, there is much activity in San Francisco ; a high 
attainment is already reached ; and a healthy progress 
in the right direction is visibly constant. The New 
England elements are clearly dominant here and 
through the whole Pacific Coast region ; softened in 
many of their old Puritanic notions and habits, — 
marrying themselves to the freer and more sensuous 
life of a new country with a cosmopolitan population, 
but still preserving their best qualities of decency, of 
order, of justice, of constant progress upward in mor- 
ality and virtue. The " Pikes " were the first people 
all over this country, — emigrants from Missouri, to 
which again they had been emigrants from the 
Southern States, — and, joined to some direct importa- 
tions from the home of the chivalry, they gave tone 
to society, and law, or rather want of law, to the 
government of city and State. But the Vigilance 
Committee revolution of 1855, — a mob in the interest 
of justice and order and morality, — inaugurated a 
new era. That was the North against the South, — 
the clash of their civilizations ; and the North, seizing 
the instrumentalities of violence, rose and destroyed 
violence itself There was, again, at the opening of 
the civil war, a fresh suffusion of the Northern and 
national spirit. It came like a whirlwind, and swept 
away all opposition, all questioning in its path. 
Unionism became a passion, rather than a sentiment; 
and all who sympathized with the South, all who 
hesitated to espouse the side of the North, were 
relentlessly persecuted. It was in voicing this up- 
rising of nationality, in seeming to lead and inspire 
It, indeed, that T. Starr King, then the Unitarian 



SCHOOL-HOUSES AND CHURCHES. 355 

minister in San Francisco, won such renown abroad, 
such faith and popularity here ; and only his early 
death prevented his assuming a prominent and per- 
manent position in the politics of the Pacific Coast 
These eras of political and moral and social reforma- 
tion have fixed the character of San Francisco and 
the Pacific States; put it in sympathy with our best 
Eastern civilization ; and most strikingly illustrated 
the capacity of the American people for progressive 
self-government; for conquering and curing the in- 
firmities of social disorder and political corruption, 
whenever they grow into threatening preponderance! 
A moral throe, an uprising, a revolution, and behold, 
without the firing of a gun, or the loss of a life 
perhaps, the evil is sloughed ofif, and its very servants 
are reformed, and minister henceforth to the good. 

Ambition and pride in the things that are respect- 
able and proper are singularly prominent in all 
this new society of the Pacific States; and men con- 
tribute lavishly to build fine school-houses and sup- 
port churches, whose lives are not especially controlled 
by the influences that school-houses and churches 
create. The gamblers give way graciously to the 
progress towards decency and respectability, and join 
m outward observance of the Sabbath, help to build 
churches, and make orderly the street life of the 
towns. It is very interesting to watch the various 
stages of this progress upward, from the new mining 
town of one or two years' life, up to San Francisco 
and Portland, which are the fullest flower of Pacific 
civilization. The order and decorum of the streets 
of these two cities are as perfect as those of Boston ; 



ggg OUR" NEW WEST. 

the San Francisco police system is admirable, and a 
woman may walk the streets of that city in the even- 
ino- with less danger of insult and annoyance than in 
those of many an inland Eastern city even. 

Money is lavished, even, on the school-houses, which 
are the most stately and elegant buildings m town; 
and the schools themselves have all the "modern im- 
provements," good and bad. There is special life 
too in the churches ; the Sabbath is certainly as well 
observed as in New York; the congregations are 
large, day and evening; the Sunday-schools even 
boast of a larger attendance, in proportion to he 
population, than those of any other city m the 
country ; new church edifices are constantly gomg 
up; and, as many Eastern parishes have reason to 
know, there is an eager seeking of the broadest and 
best pulpit talent to fill them. The demand seems 
to be for smart, effective orators, as well as holy men; 
and the churches are not easily pleased. There is 
naturally a letting-down from some of the strict dis- 
cipline of the Eastern churches in matters of social 
life and public amusement. We meet good Presby- 
terians at the opera and at balls, as we should not do 
in the Eastern States. 

The population of San Francisco is now about 
one hundred and fifty thousand, which is nearly one- 
third that of the whole State. Commerce and manu- 
factures are the great interests of the town ; and the 
growth of both is now very rapid. Already the 
third, San Francisco will speedily rank as the second 
commercial city of the RepubUc ; about forty ocean 
steamers go and come in her waters,— to Chma and 



THE COMMEKCE OF SAN FRANCISCO. 357 

Japan, Mexico, Sandwich Islands, Oregon, British Co- 
lumbia, and Panama ; and over three thousand sail- 
ing vessels entered her Bay in 1868. Most of the 
latter are employed in the coast trade for lumber 
coal and grain ; but the importation of merchandise 
from Europe and the Atlantic States, and the expor- 
tation of wheat and wool in return, have employed a 
large fleet of first-class ships. The foreign imports 
for 1868 were over fifteen millions of dollars in value; 
the domestic imports, from the Atlantic States and 
the coast ports, are not calculable, but those coming 
in by the steamers from Panama alone amounted in 
value to fifty millions of dollars ; the freight-money 
paid for all imports amounted for the year to near 
ten millions of dollars ; the merchandise exports for 
1868 were of the value of twenty-three millions, of 
which seventeen millions w^ere of domestic products, 
the principal items being, flour three millions, wheat 
eight and a half millions, wool two and a half mill- 
ions ; the exports of bullion (gold and silver) aggre- 
gated thirty-six and a half millions, of which nearly 
seven millions went direct to Asia; the United States 
Mint at San Francisco coined over seventeen millions 
of gold and silver in 1868; the duties on imports w^ere 
eight and a half millions ; and the internal revenue 
paid by San Francisco for the last year was four mill- 
ions of dollars. 

Some other statistics of the business done in San 
Francisco will be useful in further illustration of its 
importance : Ten millions of dollars were disbursed 
for army expenses in 1868 at that city, as head- 
quarters for all the army operations in the Pacific 



358 OUR NEW WEST. 

States ; three millions (or a falling off of one million 
from 1867) were paid in dividends from gold and 
silver mining companies, operating mostly on the Corn- 
stock lode in Nevada and in the Grass Valley mines of 
California, but all chiefly owned in San Francisco; 
banking, gas, water, insurance and similar local corpor- 
ations paid two millions and a half of dollars in divi- 
dends for 1868 ; the northern cod fisheries brought 
half a million dollars worth of fish into the city last 
year; there were six thousand seven hundred sales of 
real estate amounting in all to over twenty-seven mill- 
ions of dollars, and three thousand mortgages were 
made representing eleven and a half millions, while 
two thousand releases of mortgages were executed, 
representing over five millions of property ; the aver- 
age price of flour during 1868 was $6.39 a barrel, of 
wheat $2.12 per hundred pounds ; number of hides 
received at San Francisco during the year, one hun- 
dred and six thousand ; amount of wool received 
over fifteen millions of pounds ; number of ships 
sailing with cargoes of wheat, one hundred and ninety- 
two, including ninety-seven to Great Britain, forty- 
seven to Atlantic States, eleven to China and twenty- 
two to Australia. These figures show the variety as 
well as present extent of San Francisco's traffic ; but 
they are only the faint beginnings of its future ; and 
soon she will have no other rivals in commercial im- 
portance than London and New York. 

The extent and variety of the manufactures of the 
city are equally significant and promising. They are 
already worth thirty millions of dollars a year, or 
more than the product of all the gold mines of the 



THE MANUFACTURES OF SAN FRANCISCO. 359 

State, and equal the value of the wheat crop. Ma- 
chinery and woolens are the two most conspicuous 
and perfected branches of the manufacturing business. 
They already leave no room for importations, except 
of the very choicest articles. Cars, locomotives, 
steam-engines, all machinery for mining purposes, 
everything that the best machine shops of Massachu- 
setts and Pennsylvania can produce, are here made 
as well and at as fair prices. The woolen business is 
carried to an even higher degree of perfection ; for all 
substantial goods, there is nothing better to be had 
anywhere than those which the San Francisco mills 
manufacture ; and their blankets are not equalled in 
any country for use, beauty, or durability, — they are, 
indeed, among the real curiosities of the Coast. Fine 
jewelry is also extensively manufactured; all the 
powder needed in the Pacific States is made not far 
from the city; cotton mills are running in the city 
and its suburbs; and sugar-refining is an important 
business, the raw material coming from the Sandwich 
Islands ; while furniture, pianos, type, carriages, boots 
and shoes, brooms, cigars, clothing, glue, soap, candles, 
cutlery, fire-works, and hose and belting, are among 
the numerous articles already successfully and ex- 
tensively made here in the city. Cigar-making is an 
especially extensive business, no fewer than fifty mill- 
ions of cigars being made annually. San Francisco 
leads off for the State and Coast in all these manufiic- 
turing operations ; but her example as her capital 
are rapidly extending them on every hand ; and vast 
as must always be California's wealth in commerce, 
agriculture and minerals, it seems evident that manu- 



360 OUR NEW WEST. 

facturing will speedily take a first rank in the ele- 
ments of her power and prosperity. The materials 
are most abundantly at hand; the markets are those 
of the whole Pacific Coast, from end to end ; and the 
certainty of the business will be welcome in contrast 
to the sickening doubts of mining, and the fickleness 
of a vast system of agriculture, dependent on a cli- 
mate so tricky as that of California, and on the dis^ 
tant markets of Europe and Asia, for its reward. 

Location, surroundings, climate, facilities, these 
briefly sketched beginnings, all give certain assur- 
ance of a grand future for San Francisco. Never, 
does it seem, were such elements of sure and rapid 
growth gathered over another city, as now gather 
about this. What London is to Central and Western 
Europe, what New York to the Atlantic States, that 
certainly San Francisco will be to the Pacific Coast 
region. Then she is nearer that great store-house of 
population and wealth, Asia, than either of her rivals. 
She has a nearer and more various agriculture, also, 
than either can boast of. She is the center and sea- 
port of the great mineral-producing region of the 
continent, of the world. Our East, Europe, Asia will 
alike come to her for gold and silver and for wheat. 
What greater evidence of her advantage and their 
dependence, than this simple fact. Her population 
is more likely to treble than to double in ten years; 
and wonderful as the changes upon these sand-hills in 
the twenty years since gold was discovered in Cali- 
fornia, still more complete and revolutionary will 
those of the next ten years be. 

Even now San Francisco will impress all her visitors 



THE NEW ENGLAND "TAINT." 361 

deeply in many ways. They will see it is very new ; 
yet they will feel it is very old. Civilization is better 
organized here in some respects than in any city out 
of Paris; some of its streets look as if transplanted 
from a city of Europe; others are in the first stages 
of rescue from the barbaric desert. Asia, Europe and 
America have here met and embraced each other; 
yet the strong mark of America is upon and in all; 
an America, in which the flavor of New England can 
be tasted above all other local elements; an America 
in which the flexibility, the adaptability, and the all- 
penetrating, all-subduing power of its own race, are 
everywhere and in everything manifest. 



XIX. 

COUNTRY EXCURSIONS IN CALIFORNIA. 

Southern California — Los Angelos, etc. — The Country About San 
Francisco — Oakland, Santa Clara, San Jose, etc. — A Ride Around 
the Bay — The Old Mission Establishments and their History — 
The Country in Summer — A Trip to the Geysers — Russian River, 
Napa and Sonoma Valleys and their Characteristics — "Hell on 
Earth" Indeed — The Fashionable " Baths" of California — A San 
Francisco Girl " Takes a Drink" — The Wines of California — Cham- 
pagne the Mother's Milk of the True CaUfornian — Back to the City. 

Far away in the south of California, where the 
tropical fruits grow so luxuriantly and where the 
Spanish-Mexican life still holds sway, though rapidly 
yielding to the tide of American influences, are most 
interesting regions for the traveler. San Diego, Los 
Angelos, San Bernadino, and Santa Barbara, and the 
valleys and hills about, are full of natural beauty and 
wealth; of immense flocks, of wide vineyards, of 
orange and lemon groves, of grand wheat and barley 
fields; and no one can be said to have fully seen Cal- 
ifornia who has not visited them, taken in a sense of 
their vast capacities, and studied the mingling Span- 
ish and American civilizations there planted. But the 
general characteristics of climate and scenery are the 
same as in the more central regions of the State; 



THE SUMMER IN THE COUI^TRT. 363 



intervening are less interesting and still more lago-ard 
counties; and few mere summer visitors will care to 
go so far from San Francisco, until the Kailroad, now 
pushing rapidly down into and through all this South- 
ern Coast section of the State, to meet and bring north 
the Southern Pacific Kailroad as it comes across the 
Continent, is completed. 

That which is most interesting to be seen in Cali- 
fornia, out of the Sierra Nevadas, lies in the counties 
around and adjoining San Francisco Bay, north and 
south. These are the present garden of the State; 
here the best and the most of its rural populations, 
its largest and finest vineyards, its most fruitful or- 
chards, its most remunerative wheat fields; here, too, 
the best of that charmingly close union of hill and 
valley, of grove and open plain, of mountains crowned 
and canyons filled with forests, and mountains naked 
in every part, that so wonderfully characterize the 
Coast Range region of California. 

The long summer drouth and the sharp summer 
sun had made everything dry, dusty and brown; ex- 
cept the sprawling evergreen oaks, looking in the 
distance like huge apple-trees, there was absolutely 
nothing green for the eye to rest upon, outside the 
vineyards and orchards and irrigated gardens; and 
unless the wind blows against the traveler's course at 
this season, he is almost constantly clouded in dust. 
But taking the always fresh breeze aright, e very thin o- 
is pure and sweet, and an open ride over these hills 
and through these valleys,, within fifty miles of San 
Francisco, is exquisite, exhilarating pleasure. The 
dry pure air, clear and sharp and yet softening shapes 



364 OUR NEW WEST. 

and colors with a thin haze that the eye feels but 
rarely sees, is one element of this satisfaction; while 
another lies in these bare rounded hills, "so sleek and 
so dainty, the despair of artists, the inspiration of all 
observers; green in winter, thousand-blossoming in 
spring, and in summer and autumn golden-browned 
yet many colored under the soft clear sunshine," — 
their fascination is, indeed, wonderful and indescribable. 
It seems to be mere beauty and satisfaction of shape. 

Directly across the Bay, seven miles from San 
Francisco, and connected by hourly steamboats, lies 
Oakland, the principal suburban town. A great oak 
grove of fifteen hundred acres was its location, now 
well covered with pleasant cottage homes for seven 
thousand people, away from the cold summer breezes 
of the city. Here are the favorite schools for the 
young, the embryo but ambitious State University, 
the asylum for the deaf and dumb and blind, and 
here the first cotton mill on the Pacific Coast began 
its work. Eanges of the Coast mountain hills radiate 
out from the town, and protect choice orchards and 
gardens for the city markets. 

Below the city, along the Bay, another string of 
charming suburban towns, San Mateo, Redwood City, 
Santa Clara and San Jose, occupy fertile valleys, and 
stretch up into forested nooks among the hills that 
keep ofi" the sea breeze. A ride around the Bay, 
down one side and up the other, a hundred miles in 
all, offers most recompensing experiences. Railroads 
already cover most of the journey, which is better 
made more leisurely in carriages, however, so as to 
linger in some of the grand orchards and gardens, that 



THE OLD SPANISH MISSIOJ^S. 365 

wealth and taste have developed, observe in detail the 
rich gifts that agriculture has brought to this country, 
and visit the old Mission churches and homes, and eat 
figs and peaches and pears and plums from their over- 
grown gardens of the last century. 

There are several of these old Mission establish- 
ments around San Francisco Bay, and many others in 
Southern California. They were the outposts of the 
Spanish and Catholic civilization in Mexico, planted 
one hundred and more years ago, among the Indians 
of California. Soldiers and priests carried the ban- 
ners of the sword and the cross together ; and made 
short and sharp work of converting a feeble race of 
savages, who became the simple slaves of their new 
masters, and wasted away under the influences of a 
Christianity without compassion and a civilization 
without conscience. The construction of these quaint 
old churches and long capacious dwellings, built slowly 
up of clay and stones, without wood or nails, was 
performed by the Indians under the lead of their 
Spanish taskmasters, while the savages themselves, 
more wretched than in their original condition, were 
crowded into miserable adjacent huts. The cultiva- 
tion of the soil, and the variety of food that resulted, 
were the only real gifts bestowed upon the natives ; 
such salvation of soul as soldier and priest united 
to confer could hardly have been a blessing. But 
the capacities of the country for fruits and grains 
were thus first developed by these missionary pio- 
neers; their example and their triumph here are 
all that remain for which the present generation 
has to thank them, unless it be for beginning the 



366 OUK NEW WEST. 

work of civilizing the Indians out of existence. Mod- 
ern convents and churches prove the continued pres- 
ence of the same Catholic elements, but so changed 
in character that their old and new civilizations 
would hardly recognize one another. Now they 
offer the best education that our Puritan emigrants 
to California can give their children here, and tem- 
per the winds of their religion to the shorn lambs of 
this free and material California life. 

The season was over, and nature was at rest in all 
these valleys; the oaks occasionally made parks in 
the open plains; or the orchards and gardens pre- 
sented green, oasis-like spots in the landscape; but 
for the most part, the ground was yellow with the 
stubble of the grain, or brown with the dry grass, 
that is hay ungathered, and rich feed still for cattle 
and horse. And yet, form and color and sky gave 
the abundant recompense; and we yielded to the 
fascinations of a new nature; for, spite of all the 
reasonings of experience and education, here were 
beauty and exhilarating life, without rain for many 
months, without forests, without green grass or bright 
flowers, without fresh rivers. 

A lonorer and more varied excursion was that into 
the counties north of San Francisco, through the Pet- 
aluma, Santa Rosa, Russian River, Napa and Sonoma 
Valleys, to see the Geysers, or famous boiling springs, 
and the vineyards. There is more variety of scenery 
in this region than directly around the Bay; and it 
is all thickly-strewn with pleasant, thriving villages, 
whose prosperity is the out-growth of the soil. We 
went by steamboat across the northern branches of the 



THE RIDE TO THE GEYSERS. 367 

Bay, up Petaluma Creek to Petaluma, and then took 
horses for the rest of the trip of three days. Largest 
and most bountiful of these Coast Range valleys, that 
we visited, was that of Russian River, distinguished 
for its kindliness to our New England crop of Indian 
corn, and its toothsome grouse, the honne hoiiche of 
the gourmand's dinner in town, and grand with wide 
openr fields of grain, as beautiful with frequent oak 
groves, the hills about guarding the area from the 
entrance of rough winds, and framing the whole in 
a picture of imposing beauty. 

Sunrise the second morning found us whirling along 
a rough road over the mountains to the especial ob- 
ject of the excursion. But the drive of the morning 
was the more remarkable feature. We supposed the 
Plains and Sierras had exhausted possibilities for us 
in that respect. But they were both beaten here ; 
and for bold daring and brilliant execution, our driver 
that morning must take the palm of the world, I verily 
believe. The distance was twelve miles, up and down 
steep hills, through enclosed pastures ; the vehicle an 
open wagon, the passengers six, the horses four and 
gay, and changed once ; and the driver, Mr. Clark T. 
Foss, our landlord over night and owner of the route. 
For several miles the road lay along "The Hog's 
Back," the crest of a mountain that ran away from 
the point or edge, like the sides of a roof, sev- 
eral thousand feet to the ravines below ; so nar- 
row that, pressed down and widened as much as 
possible, it was rarely over ten or twelve feet 
wide, and in one place but seven feet ; and 
winding about as the crest of the hill ran; — 



368 OUR NEW WEST. 

and yet we went over this narrow causeway on the 
full gallop. 

After going up and down several mountains, hold- 
ing rare views of valleys and ravines and peaks, un- 
der the shadows and mists of early morning, we came 
to a point overlooking the Geysers. Far below in the 
valley, we could see the hot steam pouring out of the 
ground ; and wide was the waste around. The de- 
scent was almost perpendicular ; the road ran down 
sixteen hundred feet in the two miles to the hotel, 
and it had thirty -five sharp turns in its course. "Look 
at your watch," said Mr. Foss, as he started on the 
steep decline ; crack, crack went the whip over the 
heads of the leaders, as the sharp corners came in 
sight, and they plunged with seeming recklessness 
ahead, — and in 7ime minutes and a half they were 
pulled up at the bottom, and we took breath. Going 
back, the team was an hour and a quarter in the same 
passage. When we wondered at Mr. Foss for his peril- 
ous and rapid driving down such a steep road, he said, 
" Oh, there's no danger or difficulty in it, — all it needs 
is to keep your head cool, and the leaders out of the 
way." But nevertheless I was convinced it not only 
does require a quick and cool brain, but a ready and 
strong and experienced hand. The whole morning 
ride was accomplished in two hours and a quarter; 
and though everybody predicts a catastrophe from 
its apparent dangers, Mr. Foss has driven it, after 
this style, for many years, and never had an accident. 

The Geysers are exhausted in a couple of hours. 
They are certainly a curiosity, a marvel; but there 
is no element of beauty; there is nothing to be stud- 



ON THE CONFINES OF HELL. 369 

ied^ to grow into or upon jou. We had seen some- 
thing similar, though less extensive, in Nevada 3 and 
like a three-legged calf, or the Siamese twins, or any 
other monstrosity, once seeing is satisfactory for a 
life-time. They are a sort of grand natural chemical 
shop in disorder. In a little ravine, branching off 
from the valley, is their principal theater. The 
ground is white and yellow and gray, porous and 
rotten, with long and high heat. The air is also hot 
and sulphurous to an unpleasant degree. All along 
the bottom of the ravine and up its sides, the earth 
seems hollow and full of boiling water. In frequent 
little cracks and pin holes it finds vent; and out of 
these it bubbles and emits steam like so many tiny 
tea-kettles at high tide. In one place the earth 
yawns wide, and the "Witches' Caldron," several feet 
in diameter, seethes and spouts a black, inky water, 
so hot as to boil an egg instantly, and capable of re- 
ducing a human body to pulp at short notice. The 
water is thrown up four to six feet in hight, and the 
general effect is very devilish indeed. The "Witches' 
Caldron" is reproduced a dozen times in miniature, 
— handy little pools for cooking your breakfast and 
dinner, if they were only in your kitchen or back 
yard. Farther up you follow a puffing noise, exactly 
like that of a steamboat in progress, and you come 
to two fitful volumes of steam struggling out of tiny 
holes, but mounting high and spreading wide in 
their force and heat. You grow faint with the 
heat and smells; your feet seem burning; and the 
air is loaded with a mixture of salts, sulphur, iron, 
magnesia, soda, ammonia, all the chemicals and com- 



370 OUR NEW WEST. 

pounds of a doctor's shop. You feel as if the ground 
might any moment open, and let you down to a genu- 
ine hell. You recall the line from Milton, or some- 
body : " Here is hell, — myself am hell." And, most 
dreadful of all, you lose all appetite for the breakfast 
of venison, trout and grouse, that awaits your return 
to the hotel. So you struggle out of the ravine, 
every step among tiny volumes of steam, and over 
bubbling pools of water, and cool and refresh your- 
self among the trees on the mountain side beyond. 
Then, not to omit any sight, you go back through 
two other ravines where the same phenomena are 
repeated, though less extensively. All around by 
the hot pools and escape valves are delicate and 
beautiful little crystals of sulphur, and soda, and 
other distinct elements of the combustibles below, 
taking substance again on the surface. 

All this wonder-working is going on day and night, 
year after year, answering to-day exactly to the de- 
scriptions of yesterday and five years ago. Most of 
the waters are black as ink, and some as thick ; others 
are quite light and transparent; and they are of all 
degrees of temperature from one hundred and fifty to 
five hundred. Near by, too, are springs of cool 
water ; some as cold as these are hot, almost. The 
phenomena carries its own explanation ; the chemist 
will reproduce for you the same thing, on a small 
scale, by mixing sulphuric acid and cold water, and 
the other unkindred elements that have here, in 
nature's laboratory, chanced to get together. Vol- 
canic action is also most probably connected with 
some of these demonstrations. 



CALISTOGA AND WARM SPRINGS. 371 

There must be utility in these waters for the cure 
of rheumatism and other blood and skin diseases. 
The Indians have long used some of the pools in this 
way, with results that seem like fables. One of the 
pools has a fame for eyes ; and, with chemical exam- 
ination and scientific application, doubtless large 
benefits might be reasonably assured among invalids 
from a resort to these waters. At present there is 
only a rough little bathing-house, collecting the 
waters from the ravine, and the visitors to the val- 
ley, save for curiosity, are but few. It is a wild, 
unredeemed spot, all around the Geysers; beautiful 
with deep forests, a mountain stream, and clear air. 
Game, too, abounds; deer and grouse and trout 
seemed plentier than in any region we have visited. 
There is a comfortable hotel ; but otherwise this val- 
ley is uninhabited. The entire region for two miles 
in length and half a mile in breadth, including all the 
springs, is owned by one man, who offers it for sale. 
Who would speculate in a mundane hell ? 

Back on the route of our morning ride, we soon 
turned off into the neighboring valley of Napa, cele- 
brated for its agricultural beauty and productiveness, * 
and also for its Calistoga and Warm Springs, charm- 
ingly located, the one in the plain and the other 
close among the mountains, beautifully embowered 
in vines and forests, and both serving as fashionable 
summer resorts for the San Franciscans. The water 
is sulphurous ; the bathing delicious, softening the 
skin to the texture of a babe's ; the country every 
way charming; but we found both establishments, 
though with capacious head-quarters and numerous 
23 



372 OUR NEW WEST. 

family cottages, almost deserted of people. A rail- 
road now connects these Springs with San Francisco ; 
and their use and popularity will increase and be per- 
manent. In the attractions of nature and the ap- 
pointments of art for the comfort of strangers, they 
are more like some of those charming country "baths" 
in Germany than anything we have in the Eastern 
States. It was here, at the " Warm Springs," that 1 
saw a " loud " San Francisco belle, young and hand- 
some and beautifully dressed, march up to the open 
bar and take her "night-cap drink" with some of the 
first gentlemen of the town. 

Past farms and orchards, through parks of ever- 
green oak that looked as perfect as if the work of 
art, we stopped at the village of Napa, twin and rival 
to Petaluma, and from here, crossing another spur of 
the Coast Eange, we entered still another beautiful 
and fertile valley, that of Sonoma. There we lin- 
gered most of a day, among the vineyards, in wine 
cellars, upon grand estates like those of English noble- 
men or German princes. But we did not find the 
wines very inviting; they partook of the general 
character of the Rhine wines and the Ohio Catawba, 
but were rougher, harsh and heady, — needing appar- 
ently both some improvement in culture and manufac- 
ture and time for softening. As doctors are said never 
to take their own medicines, the true Californian is 
slow to drink his own wine. He prefers to import 
from France, and to export to the East ; and prob- 
ably both kinds are improved by the voyages. More 
French wines are drank in California, twice over, 
than by the same population in any part of the East- 



AGRICULTURAL JEWELS OF CALIFORNIA. 373 

ern States. Champagne is mother's milk, indeed, to 
all these people ; they start the day with " a cham- 
pagne cock-tail," and go to bed with a full Lottie of 
it under their ribs. At all the bar-rooms, it is sold 
by the glass, the same as any other liquor, and it 
answers to the general name of "wine" with both 
drinker and landlord. 

From Sonoma, over another hill, to our steamboat 
of three days before, and by that back in a few hours 
to the city. These few days seemed long, they had 
been so rich in novelty and knowledge, in beauty of 
landscape, in acquaintanceship with the best riches 
of California. These valleys are, indeed, her agricul- 
tural jewels, and should be held as prouder posses- 
sions by the State than her gold mines. The small 
grains, fruits and vegetables are their common, chief 
productions ; and the yields are enormous, while cul- 
ture and care are comparatively light. No part of 
California is more readily accessible to the stranger; 
and none more abundantly repays a visit than this. 

But our longest and most recompensing excursion 
in California was to the Yo Semite Valley and the 
Big Tree Groves in the Sierra Nevada Mountains; 
and this invites a special chapter. 



THE YO SEMITE VALLEY AND THE BIG TEEES. 

Tlie Impressions of the Valley — General Description of its Features — 
Its Columns of Rock^Its Waterfalls — How to Pronounce Yo Semite 
— The Journey to the Valley — The Big Tree Grove and the Yo Sem- 
ite Dedicated to Public Use — June the Season for the Excursion — 
The High Sierras above and around the Valley — What they Re- 
veal — The Coulterville Road and Bowers' Cave — The Big Tree 
Groves — Interesting Facts about the Trees — The Largest Excursion 
Party to Valley and Trees. 

The Yo Semite ! As well interpret God in thirty- 
nine articles as portray it to you by word of mouth 
or pen. As well reproduce castle or cathedral by a 
stolen frieze, or broken column, as this assemblage of 
natural wonder and beauty by photograph or paint- 
ing. The overpowering sense of the sublime, of awful 
desolation, of transcending marvelousness and unex- 
pectedness, that swept over us, as we reined our 
horses sharply out of green forests, and stood upon 
the high jutting rock that overlooked this rolling, 
upheaving sea of granite mountains, holding far down 
its rough lap this vale of beauty of meadow and 
grove and river, — such tide of feeling, such stoppage 
of ordinary emotions comes at rare intervals in any 
life. It was the confrontal of God face to face, as in 



THE GRAND FEATURES OF THE TO SEMITE. 375 

great danger, in solemn, sudden death. It was Niag- 
ara, magnified. All that was mortal shrank back, all 
that was immortal swept to the front and bent down 
in awe. We sat till the rich elements of beauty came 
out of the majesty and the desolation, and then, eager 
to get nearer, pressed tired horses down the steep, 
rough path into the Valley. 

And here we wandered and wondered and wor- 
shiped for four days. Under sunshine and shadow; 
by rich mellow moonlight; by stars opening double 
wide their eager eyes; through a peculiar August 
haze, delicate, glowing, creamy, yet hardly perceptible 
as a distinct element, — the New England Indian sum- 
mer haze doubly refined, — by morning and evening 
twilight, across camp fires, up from beds upon the 
ground through all the watches of the night, have we 
seen this, the great natural wonder of our western 
world. Indeed, it is not too much to say that no so 
limited space in all the known w^orld offers such ma- 
jestic and impressive beauty. Niagara alone divides 
honors with it in America. Only the whole of Switz- 
erland can surpass it, — no one scene in all the Alps 
can match this so vividly before me now in the things 
that mark the memory and impress all the senses for 
beauty and for sublimity. 

The one distinguishing feature of the Yo Semite is 
a double wall of perpendicular granite, rising from 
half a mile to a mile in height, and inclosing a val- 
ley not more than half a mile in width on the aver- 
age, and from six to eight miles in length. It is a 
fissure, a chasm, rather than a valley, in solid rock 
mountains; there is not breadth enough in it at many 



376 OUR NEW WEST. 

points for even one of its walls to lie down ; and yet 
it offers all the fertility, all the beauties of a rich 
valley. There is meadow with thick grass; there are 
groves of pine and oak, the former exquisite in form 
and majestic in size, rising often to one hundred and 
fifty and even two hundred feet in hight ; there are 
thickets of willow and birch, bay trees and dogwood, 
and various flowering shrubs ; primrose and cowslip 
and golden rod and violet and painted cup, more 
delicate than Eastern skies can welcome, made gay 
garden of all the vacant fields in August ; the aroma 
of mint, of pine and fir, of flower, loaded the air; the 
fern family find a familiar home everywhere; and 
winding in and out among all flows the Merced River, 
so pure and transparent that you can hardly tell 
where the air leaves off" and the water begins, rolling 
rapidly over polished stones or soft sands, or staying 
in wide, deep pools that invite the bather and the 
boat, and holding trout only less rich and dainty than 
the brook trout of New England. The soil, the trees, 
the shrubs, the grasses and the flowers of this little 
Valley are much the same in general character and 
variety as those of the valleys of New England ; but 
they are richer in development and greater in num- 
ber. They borrow of the mountain fecundity and 
sweetness; and they are fed by occasional summer 
rains as those of other California valleys rarely are. 

Now imagine, — can you? — rising up, sheer and 
sharp, on each side of this line of fertile beauty, 
irregularly-flowing and variously-crowned walls of 
granite rock, thrice as high as the Connecticut Val- 
ley's Mounts Tom and Holyoke, twice as high as 



THE DOMES OF THE YALLEY. 377 

Berkshire's Graylock, and quite as high as New 
Hampshire's Mount Washington. The color of the 
rock greatly varies. A grayish drab or yellow is the 
dominant shade, warm and soft. In large spots, it 
whitens out ; and again it is dark and discolored as 
if by long exposure to rain and snow and wind. 
Sometimes the light and dark shades are thrown 
into sharp contrast on a single wall, and you know 
where the Zebra and Dr. Bellows' church were bor- 
rowed from. More varied and exquisite still are 
the shapes into which the rocks are thrown. The 
one great conspicuous object of the Yalley is a mas- 
sive, two-sided wall, standing out into and over the 
meadow, yellowish-gray in color, and rising up into 
space, unbroken, square, perpendicular, for full three" 
quarters of a mile. It bears in Spanish and Indian 
the name of the Great Jehovah; and it is easy to 
believe that it was an object of worship by the bar- 
barians, as it is not difficult for civilization to rec- 
ognize the Infinite in it, and impossible not to feel 
awed and humbled in its presence. 

In other places these mountain walls of rock take 
similar and only less majestic shapes; while as fre- 
quently they assume more fantastic and poetical 
forms. Here and there are grand massive domes, 
as perfect in shape as Boston's State-house dome, and 
bigger than the entire of a dozen State-houses. The 
highest rock of the Valley is a perfect half-dome, split 
sharp and square in the middle, and rising near a 
mile or five thousand feet, — as high as Mount Wash- 
ington is above the level of the sea, — over the little 
lake which perfectly mirrors its majestic form at its 



378 OUR :^fEW west. 

foot. Perfect pyramids take their places in the wall; 
then these pyramids come in families, and mount 
away one after and above the other, as "The Three 
Brothers." "The Cathedral Kocks" and "The Ca- 
thedral Spires" unite the great impressiveness, the 
beauty and the fantastic forms of the Gothic archi- 
tecture. From their shape and color alike, it is easy 
to imagine, in looking upon them, that you are under 
the ruins of an old Gothic cathedral, to which those 
of Cologne and Milan are but baby-houses. 

The most common form of the rocks is a slightly 
sloping bare wall, lying in long, dizzy sweeps, some- 
times horizontal, sometimes perpendicular, and stretch- 
ing up and up so high as to cheat the Valley out of 
hours of sunshine every day. Here huge arches are 
carved on the face ; there long, narrow shelves run 
midway, along which and in every available crevice, 
great pines sprout and grow, yet appearing like 
shrubs against the broad hight of the wall; again, 
the rock lies in thick folds, one upon another, like 
the hide of a rhinoceros; occasional columns stand 
out as if sculptured upon the surface ; sometimes it 
juts out at the top over the Yalley like the brim of 
a hat; and then it recedes and sharpens to a cone. 
Many of the various shapes and shades of color in 
the surface of these massive walls of rock come from 
the peeling off of great masses of the granite. Frost 
and ice get into the weak crevices, and blast out 
huge slices or fragments, that fall in boulders, from 
the size of a. great house down to that of an apple, 
into the Yalley below. 

Over the sides of the walls pour streams of water 



THE WATER FALLS. 379 

out of narrower valleys still above, and yet higher 
and farther away, rise to twelve and thirteen thousand 
feet the culminating peaks of the Sierra Nevadas, 
with ever visible fields of melting snows. All forms 
and shapes and colors of majesty and beauty cluster 
around this narrow spot; it seems created the home 
of all that is richest in inspiration for the heroic in 
life, for poetry, for painting, for imaginative religion. 
The Water Falls of the Valley, though a lesser inci- 
dent in all its attractions, offer much that is marvel- 
ous and beautiful. Our August visit was, however, 
at the season of their feeblest power. It is in May 
and June, when their fountains are freshest, that they 
appear at their best, and assume their proper place 
in the grand panorama of beauty and sublimity. In 
the main portion of the Valley, the Bridal Veil is the 
first conspicuous fall, — now a dainty rivalet starting 
over a precipice nine hundred feet high, but nearly 
all lost at once in delicate spray that sways and scat- 
ters in the light breeze, and fastens upon the wall, as 
sign of its being and its beauty, the fabled rainbow 
of promise. The name of this fall is well chosen; it 
is type of the delicate gauze, floating and illusory, by 
which brides delight to hide their blushes and give 
mystery to their charms. Farther up, before the 
hotel, you see the Yo Semite Fall, perhaps twice the 
size in volume of the Bridal Veil, but distinguished 
for its hight, — the greatest hight of any water-fall 
yet discovered in the world. It is broken about two- 
thirds the way down its high wall of rock by pro- 
jecting masses of the mountain, giving it several 
hundred feet of cataract passage; but counting its 



380 OUR NEW WEST. 

whole fall from top to bottom, it is two thousand six 
hundred feet in hight, which is only fifteen times as 
high as Niagara Falls! Now, it was a mere silvery 
ribbon of spray, shooting down its long passage in 
delicate rockets of whitened foam. Earlier in the 
season, when ten times the volume of water pours 
down, it must, indeed, be a feature of fascinating, 
wonderful beauty. 

The Valley above this point separates into three 
narrow canyons, and these are soon walled in by the 
uprising rocks. At the end of one of these, the main 
branch of the river falls from its upper fountains over 
two walls, one four hundred feet high and the other 
six hundred, at points half a mile apart. The lower 
and lesser fall is called the Yernal, and pours down 
its whole hight without a break, and forms at the base 
a most exquisite circular rainbow, one of the rarest 
phenomenon in all nature. The upper fall bears the 
name of Nevada, breaks as it comes over its crest 
into a grand blossom of spray, and strikes, about half 
way down its six hundred feet, the obtruding wall, 
which thence offers just sufficient slope to keep the 
water and carry it in chasing, circling lines of foam 
to the bottom. This is the fall of falls, — there is no 
rival to it here in exquisite, various, fascinating 
beauty ; and Switzerland, which abounds in water- 
falls of like type, holds none of such peculiar charms. 
Not a drop of the rich stream of water but is white 
in its whole passage, — it is one sheet, rather one 
grand lace-work of spray from beginning to end. As 
it sweeps down its plane of rock, each drop all dis- 
tinct, all alive, there is nothing of human art that 



THE NAME OF THE VALLEY. 381 

you can compare it with but innumerable snow-wbite 
point-lace collars and capes; as much more delicate 
and beautiful and perfect, however, as Nature ever is 
than Art. For half the distance between the two 
falls, the river runs swift over a solid plane of granite, 
clean and smooth as ice, as if Neptune was on a grand 
eliding-down-hill frolic. 

The excursion to this head of the chasm from the 
stopping-place below is through narrow defiles, over 
fallen rocks, up the sides of precipices, and over per- 
pendicular w^alls by ladders, for a total distance of 
about four miles, and is the most difficult and fatiguing 
one that confronts the visitor ; but both in the beauty 
of its water-falls, and the new and rare shapes of rock 
scenery that it offers, it is most richly compensating, 
and never should be omitted. 

The name that has attached to this beautiful 
Yalley is both unique and euphonious. It rolls off* 
the tongue most liquidly when you get the mas- 
tery of its pronunciation. Most strangers render it 
Yo Se-mite, or Yo Sem-ite; but the true style is 
Yo Sem-i-te. It is Indian for Grizzly Bear, and prob- 
ably was also the name of a noted chief, who reigned 
over the Indians in this, their favorite retreat, and 
from this chief comes the application of the name to 
the locality and its marvelous scenery. The foot of 
white man never trod its limits, — the eye of white 
man never looked upon its sublime wonders till 1851, 
when he came here in pursuit of the Indians, with 
whom the settlers were then at war. The red men 
had boasted that their retreat was secure ; that they 
had one spot which their enemies could never pene- 



382 OUR NEW WEST. 

trate ; and here they would gather in and enjoy their 
spoils unmolested. But to the white man's revenge 
was now added the stimulus of curiosity; and hither 
he found his way, and, coming to kill and extermi- 
nate, he has staid, and will forever henceforth stay, 
to wonder and worship. 

The journey from San Francisco to this sublime 
charm in California scenery is at present long and 
tedious. The Yo Semite Valley lies about a hundred 
and fifty miles south-east of the city, in a direct line, 
far up among the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Stock- 
ton, at the foot of the San Joaquin Valley, is the 
real point of departure for the Valley, and from here 
the distance varies from a hundred to a hundred and 
forty miles, according to the route traveled. Stock- 
ton is a hundred and twenty miles from San Francisco 
by water, — an evening and night steamboat ride ; but 
the Pacific Railroad passes through it on the way from 
Sacramento to San Francisco, and by the cars it is 
but a three or four hours' ride from either of those 
places. At present, the best route on from Stockton 
is the longest, and by way of Mariposa. A day's 
stage ride up the San Joaquin Valley, — a broad and 
rich area, now greatly given up to wheat-growing, 
and dry and dusty to suffocating degree in summer, 
— leaves the traveler at Bear Valley or Mariposa for 
the night. These are villages on the famous Fre- 
mont estate, and offer better accommodations for 
visitors than the neighboring mines return dividends 
to their stockholders. Here horses, guides, and, if 
desired, tents, blankets and food, for continuing the 
journey, may be procured. The wagon road con- 



THE EOAD TO THE TO SEMITE. 383 

tinues twenty-five miles beyond Bear Yalley, or 
twelve from Mariposa, to White and Hatch's, which 
may be reached for dinner the second day from 
Stockton; and Clark's Ranch, twelve miles farther 
up among the Mountains, along a narrow but safe 
trail, up and down steep hills, through grand woods 
of firs and pines, invites us to supper and rest. Here 
w^e shall stop over a day, to visit the Mariposa Grove 
of Big Trees, some four or five miles off the trail to 
the Yo Semite. Mr. Clark is the State's agent for the 
care of the Yo Semite Yalley and the Grove, and a 
genuine child of the great Nature around him ; and 
w^hether within his wide-spreading cabins, or under 
his protecting hay-stack, or in our own tent by the 
side of his grand open-air fires, he will care for us as 
father for children, feed us on trout and venison, and 
be proud to have us praise his trees, his river and his 
mountains. 

It is twenty-five miles now to the Grand Yalley; 
and taking our lunch along, w^e shall ride it comfort- 
ably in a single day, and find hotel accommodations 
at night within the Yalley. The day's ride takes us 
as high as eight thousand feet above the sea level, 
treats us to the finest forest and meadow scenery of 
the Sierras, and drops us down by a very precipitous 
trail to the scenes that have invited and will so richly 
compensate us. The Yalley itself is about four thou- 
sand feet above the sea level; the mountain w^alls 
rising up from it range from two thousand to five 
thousand feet higher, or from six thousand to nine 
thousand feet high, while on beyond the crests of the 
great range add three to five thousand feet to these. 



384 OUR NEW WEST. 

It is not at all necessary that visitors should bring 
camping and cooking outfits with them; hotels and 
ranches are scattered along either route with sufficient 
frequency to give all essential accommodations ; but, 
if they do, they will reap great satisfaction in the 
independence that follows. With plenty of blankets, 
a safe, dry and comfortable bed is ever at hand, and 
the limit of the day's journey is always your own 
choice. All the distinctive features of the Yalley 
may be seen in three daysj indeed, its great beauties 
lie at once and together before the eye; we nearly 
see the end from the beginning; and the Valley closes 
up so sharply, both above and below, that it is easier 
to get in and out by scaling the walls than by follow- 
ing the stream. But no week in any life could be 
more memorable than the one that should be spent 
under the rocks and by the side of the waters of the 
Yo Semite. 

The Yalley, together with the Mariposa Grove of 
Big Trees on the road to it, were some years since 
wisely voted by Congress to the State of California, 
on condition of their preservation for public use. 
They have been put in charge of a Commission, with 
a local agent to protect the trees from destruction and 
the limited lands from misuse; and the purpose of 
these officers is to improve the access to these great 
natural attractions, and furnish every facility to visit- 
ors for seeing all their interesting features at the least 
cost of labor, time and money. The idea is a noble 
one, and, though somewhat obstructed temporarily 
by the claim of several squatters in the Yalley to 
tiearly all its available lands, we cannot doubt it will 



WHEN TO VISIT THE VALLEY. 385 

in time be fully realized. It is a pity that other great 
natural objects of interest and points of attraction for 
travelers in our country could not be similarly res- 
cued from subjection to speculating purposes, or de- 
struction by settlement. If Niagara Falls, for instance, 
and a fifty miles square of the Adirondacks in New 
York, and a similar area of Maine lake and forest, 
could be thus preserved for public use, what a blessing 
it would be to all visitors, what an honor to the Nation ! 

On the whole, June is the best month for this ex- 
cursion. It is early spring among the mountains, 
then, and there may be an occasional snow-drift in 
the path; but nature is at its freshest, and, above all, 
the water-falls in the valley are then in their fullest 
force and beauty. Besides those we have mentioned, 
others at that season trickle in bright beauty over 
the high rock walls of the Yalley; and the Bridal 
Veil, the Yo Semite, the Yernal and the Nevada are 
vastly more impressive and beautiful than later in 
the summer. There is a rapid falling off in the 
amount of water flowing in these streams after May 
or June. Clouds are rare visitors to California's sky 
in any part of the summer; and the deep haze that 
may be found in many famous paintings of Yo Semite 
scenery is an addition of the artists, not a gift of 
nature. In later summer there is a thin, soft haze, 
hardly perceptible, and only just tempering the clear, 
sharp sunlight that is the characteristic of California's 
atmosphere. But the photographs do more exact 
justice to this than the painters have. 

How was this curious freak of Nature formed ? is 
a question that every visitor at least will ask. It is 



386 OUR NEW WEST. 

a puzzle to the imagination, and baffles even the 
scientific student. Professor Whitney of the State 
Survey discusses the question elaborately in his ad- 
mirable volume upon the Yo Semite, the Big Trees 
and the High Sierras, which, with its maps, should 
be the companion of every one who visits these re- 
gions. Pie rejects, as impossible, the idea of water 
having worn it out; or that it was the work of a 
glacier ; or that it was split open by a convulsion of 
nature ; but concludes, as the only practicable sup- 
position, that the bottom dropped out ! There is no 
other way of accounting for what is gone but that it 
is sunk below. It is not carried down stream; it 
does not remain in the Valley, — there would be no 
valley if it did ; there are but comparatively small 
deposits of rock in the Valley under the walls^ — no 
more than the waste, by frost and ice and water, of a 
few generations at the most; and, indeed, there seems 
no other supposition that meets the mystery than 
that the missing rocks are swallowed up below. It 
would appear, too, as if the chasm had not been long 
filled up to its present point, and that originally, and 
until within a comparatively recent period, the whole 
Valley was a grand, deep lake. This is a peculiar 
theory; it applies but rarely to the strange forms 
of nature scattered over the earth's surface ; but the 
Yo Semite is a peculiar phenomenon, — it justifies, it, 
indeed, demands a peculiar explanation, and no other 
fits it so reasonably as this. 

In connection with this excursion, the visitor to 
California should, if possible, take another week to 
mount the High Sierras above and around the Yo 



EXCUBSIOK TO THE HIGH SIEEEAS. 387 

Semite Yallej. In their grand majesty and sublimity, 
they are nowhere else more representative or more 
easy to reach, than at this point. With guide and 
camping outfit, there is no hardship to one accus- 
tomed to out-door life in the trip; there are well-de- 
fined trails to all the desirable points; rich meadows, 
sparkling streams and beautiful lakes not only lend 
a sweet variety to the grand mountain rocks, but 
furnish fine camping-grounds; while abundant trees 
offer shade for the noon sissta and fuel for cooking 
and the cool nights. Few persons have as yet visited 
this region for pleasure ; but the search for mines or 
for the wild sheep of the mountains has made the 
paths familiar to many people in the neighborhood; 
and Professor Whitney's enthusiastic description of 
the grand views to be obtained, in the circuit, not only 
into the Yalley of iihe Yo Semite, but over and along 
the crest of the SierraSj — here reaching to twelve 
and thirteen thousaiJ feet high; — great masses of 
rock varying with great fields of snow, relieved with 
dark and deep lakes, and patches of meadow and 
forest, furnishing the near, and the distant ranges of 
the Interior Basin, with their vast desert valleys, the 
remote landscape, — all will kindle the curiosity of the 
traveler and lead many to follow out the trails and 
the suggestions his book lays down. 

This upper mountain excursion carries us to the 
head waters of the streams that pour over the Yo 
Semite walls ; it brings us to the shores of beautiful 
Lake Tenaya ; by a detour of a few miles it will lead 
us to another Yo Semite Yalley on the Tuolumne 
River, called the Hetch-Hetchy Yalley, which but for 
24 



388 OUR NEW WEST. 

its grander rival would have a world-wide fame, and 
will yet be a favorite resort of Sierra pleasure travel ; 
it exhibits to us the scene of former glaciers, that 
must have been eight hundred and a thousand feet 
thick with ice and snow, and a mile and a half wide ; 
it lifts us to the top of representative peaks as Hoff- 
man and Dana, whence the world seems to start away 
from our feet, — so central and vast the view ; it will 
lead us, if we choose to branch off from our circuit, 
on down the eastern slope of tne range to Mono 
Lake, a large sheet of water, dense, sluggish, bitter, 
acid and corrosive, forbidding all life within, consuming 
all life from without, — the bodies of a party of Indians 
who jumped into these death waters to escape their 
pursuers being thoroughly decomposed, with all their 
clothing, in a few weeks, — an outpost warning, indeed, 
against the Desert and Death's Valley beyond ; after 
which we may return with delight to fresher waters, 
and stand over the grand Nevada Fall of the Yo 
Semite, and see the Little Yo Semite, a continuation 
in miniature of the Yalley we have adored; then pass 
under the shadows of Mount Starr King, one of the 
grandest of the outlying peaks of the Yalley ; next 
come to the top of the Sentinel Dome, whence we get 
the finest views into and of the Yalley, and especially 
of its highest column, the Half Dome ; and now finish 
our circuit by reaching the main Mariposa trail. 
This scenery of the Upper Sierras is of a type of its 
own, as distinctive as that of the Swiss Alps, as that 
of the Parks and Mountains of Colorado, as that of 
the Yo Semite itself below; unlike either, but en- 
titled to rank with them all in the first place among 



THE BIG TREE GROVES. 389 

the grand Nature of the world. In the two elements 
of sublimity and grandeur, it probably surpasses all 
the others; while it lacks the beauty and variety that 
give them a tenderer hold upon human sympathy. 
The Eocky Mountains are vast piles of broken stone ; 
these Upper Sierras are great smooth castellated peaks 
or rounded domes of solid granite, sometimes unbroken 
and unscarred almost for thousands of feet, but often 
made up of vast concentric layers of rock, reaching 
from a broad base to conical pinnacles, like cathedral 
spires, and to the eye almost toppling in their dizzy 
hight. 

Entering the Yo Semite region by the Mariposa 
road, it is best to go back by the Coulterville track. 
Thus new scenes are spread before the traveler, and 
all the various beauty and wonder of the California 
mountains are impressed upon his mind. On the 
Coulterville road is Bowers' Cave, a great hole in 
the rock, one hundred and thirty-three feet long, 
eighty-six wide and one hundred and nine deep, and 
opening out below into recesses that may be fol- 
lowed for a considerable distance. A large pool of 
water is at the bottom, and three maple trees start- 
ing below send their tops out into the open world 
above. The bottom of the cave can be reached by 
steps, and a boat offers a ride upon its subterranean 
waters. 

Included in the Yo Semite excursion, as already 
indicated, will no^turally be a visit to one or more of 
the Big Tree Groves of California. No other one of 
the natural curiosities of the Pacific States has be- 
come so notorious as these trees. They were dis- 



390 OUR NEW WEST. 

covered in 1852, and their fame ran rapidly over the 
world, accompanied with greatly exaggerated state- 
ments as to their size and age. The first sight of 
them is therefore generally disappointing; they are 
not so big, generally, as has been reported ; and they 
do not seem to be as big as they are. In no case 
do these mammoth trees make an exclusive forest 
of their own ; but they have been found scattered 
among the other trees of the mountain forests at 
some eight different places along the sides of the 
Sierras, at elevations of from four thousand to seven 
thousand feet, and within a distance of one hundred and 
fifty miles south of the center of the State. None 
have ever been found out of this line ; and the only 
trees to which they bear any close resemblance are 
the Eedwoods of the Coast Mountains. Both are pecu- 
liarly California trees, and one is confined exclusively 
to the Coast and the other to the Sierra Mountains. 
They bear the common name of the Sequoia, in honor 
of the celebrated Cherokee Indian who made an alpha- 
bet and a language for his tribe ; but the Big Trees 
proper add the distinguishing title of Gigantea, The 
Eedwood frequently makes up an exclusive forest of 
its own, and some of its individual trees are fifty feet 
in circumference and two hundred and seventy-five feet 
high ; so that it even challenges attention and divides 
glory with the Gigantea itself One Eedwood stump 
is reported, indeed, as having a diameter of thirty- 
eight feet, and, having been burnt out, it held thirty- 
three pack mules at one time, which is as large a 
story as can be told of any one of the Big Trees 
proper. 



THE SIZE AND BEAUTY OF THE TREES. 391 

The Calaveras Grove of Big Trees is the most 
northerly of the series, was the first discovered, and 
by itself is the most rec.iiy visited. But the Mari- 
posa Grove or collection is the one selected by Con- 
gress and the State for public use, and, lying near 
the favorite road to the Yo Semite Yalley, is likely 
to prove the most popular hereafter. Besides, it is 
the most numerous, and some of its trees are larger 
than any in the Calaveras collection. The hight of 
the larger trees in both groves ranges from two hun- 
dred and thirty to three hundred and twenty-five 
feet, and the circumference of their trunks from 
thirty to one hundred feet. The Mariposa Grove, 
located, as noted, only four or five miles from Clark's 
Ranch, holds about six hundred trees, one hundred 
and twenty-five of which are over forty feet in circum- 
ference each, and several from ninety to one hundred 
feet each. " The Grizzly Giant" is one of the largest 
and most notable, though far from being so comely 
as many others ; it is ninety-three feet in circumfer- 
ence, and at ninety feet above the ground sends out 
a branch which is six feet in diameter, or as large as 
the biggest trees known in any of the Eastern forests. 

But these mammoth trees are quite as impressive 
for their beauty as their bigness. The bark is an 
exquisitely light and delicate cinnamon color, fluted 
up and down the long, straight, slowly-tapering trunk, 
like Corinthian columns in architecture • the top, rest- 
ing like a cap upon a high, bare mast, is a perfect 
cone; and the evergreen leaves wear a bright, light 
shade by which the tree can be distinguished from 
afar in the forest. The wood is a deep, rich red in 



392 OUR NEW WEST. 

color, and otherwise marks the similarity of the Big 
Trees to the Redwoods of the Coast, but it is of even 
finer grain than the flesh of their lesser kindred; 
and both that and the bark, the latter sometimes as 
much as twenty inches thick, are so light and deli- 
cate, that the winds and snows of the winter make 
frequent wrecks of the tops and upper branches. 
Many of the largest of these trees are, therefore, 
shorn of their beautiful cones. One or two of the 
largest in the grove we visited are wholly blown 
down, and we rode on horseback through the trunk 
of an old one that had been burned out. Many more 
of the noblest specimens are scarred by fires that 
have been wantonly built about their trunks, or swept 
through the forests by accident. The trunk of one 
huge tree is burned into half a dozen little apart- 
ments, making capital provision for a game of hide 
and seek by children, or for dividing up a picnic of 
older growths into sentimental couples. 

Wild calculations have been made of the ages of 
the larger of these trees; but one of the oldest in 
the Calaveras Grove being cut down and the rings of 
its wood counted, its age proved to be thirteen hun- 
dred years ; and probably none now upon the ground 
date back farther than the Christian Era. They be- 
gan with our Modern Civilization; they were just 
sprouting when the Star of Bethlehem rose and stood 
for a sign of its origin; they have been ripening in 
beauty and power through these Nineteen Centuries; 
and they stand forth now, a type of the Majesty and 
Grace of Him with whose life they are coeval. Cer- 
tainly they are chief among the natural curiosities 



OUR EXCURSION PARTY. 393 

and marvels of Western America, of the known 
world; and though not to be compared, in the im- 
pressions they make and the emotions they arouse, 
to the great rock scenery of the Yo Semite, which 
inevitably carries the spectator up to the Infinite 
Creator and Father of all, they do stand for all that 
has been claimed for them in wonderful greatness and 
majestic beauty. 

Our excursion to the Yalley and the Trees was 
made with one of the largest parties of ladies and 
gentlemen that ever visited them in company. We 
exhausted all the horses of the kingdom of Fremont, 
and created famine in our path. Lodgings were 
abundant, however, for whom house and tent did 
not hold, the wide expanse of heaven safely covered, 
and the hay-stack warmed. The out-door beds, in- 
deed, came to be at a premium; for in the dry, pure 
air of this region, there is not only no harm, but 
actual health in sleeping upon the ground either 
under tents or wholly in the open air. The moun- 
tain pastures, — scattered meadows rich at this season 
with a vernal green, — furnish mutton sweeter and 
richer than even English breeders or butchers can 
give you; the forests yielded their deer, and the 
rivers their trout to our appetites; the Yalley has its 
one vegetable garden, — so that, however our imme- 
diate successors fared, we had no complaint to make 
of the commissary department. 



XXI. 

THE CHINESE. 

The Human Nature Curiosity of California — The Sixty Thousand 
Chinese — Their Character, Habits and Occupations — The Pacific 
Railroad built by Them — How they are treated by the People — The 
Indian and the Chinaman — The Limitations of the Chinese Mind — 
Stony Soil for Missionary Labor — The True Elements of Influence 
over Them — The Bath-House and the Restaurant the Real Mission- 
aries of Civilization and Christianity — The Morals, Religion and 
Vices of the Chinese — Picture of an Opium-Eater — A Grand Chinese 
Banquet to Mr, Colfax — A Specimen of " Pigeon English" — De- 
scription of the Dinner and how we Ate it, — and then went out to 
get Something to Eat — Summing up of the Chinaman in America. 

But Human Nature, too, has its curiosities in Cali- 
fornia. The presence of the Chinese in such large 
numbers in all the Pacific States, but especially in 
California, and the share they have taken already in 
the industry and growth of the country, will be a 
surprise to most strangers. They are freely scattered 
everywhere west of the Kocky Mountains and Utah ; 
every considerable town has its Chinese quarter; 
they fairly line the Pacific Railroad ; they swarm in 
the old mining gulches of the mountains; and in 
every village of California, Oregon, Idaho, Nevada, 
and even of British Columbia, we shall find them in 
more or less of the kitchens, or gardening in the out- 



REPRESENTATIVE PORTRAITS. 




Two Chinese Merchants, San Francisco. 





Indian Girl, Oregon. 



Indian Chief, Oregon. 



THE LIMITATION OF THE CHINESE MIND. 397 

skirts^ or "taking in" washing and ironing, which, by 
a sort of prescription, has fallen almost exclusively 
into their hands in all the Pacific Coast States. They 
began to come in 1852, when there was an immi- 
gration of about twenty thousand ; in all, over one 
hundred thousand have emigrated to California, but 
full forty thousand have returned, and the present 
number in all the States is about sixty thousand. 
They do not come to stay or become citizens, but 
simply to make their fortunes and go back home and 
enjoy them. Neither their families nor their priests 
follow them; they show no desire to domesticate 
themselves here ; they dread nothing more than to 
die and be buried here, and nearly every China-bound 
steamer or ship carries back home the bodies of 
Chinamen, overtaken, as death overtakes us all, in 
the struggles of their labor and ambition. 

There are a few men of great intelligence and wealth 
and ability among them. These are of larger stature 
and finer presence than the rest, who, although not 
the poorest and most debased classes of the Chinese, 
— not the Coolies proper, — are yet of a low type, 
mentally and physically, and show little capacity 
for improvement. Most of them can read and write, 
but all their education lies in a simple, narrow range, 
and here, as in their work, they all show a certain 
sure and uniform attainment, beyond which it seems 
impossible for them to go. They can beat a raw 
Irishman in a hundred ways; but while he is con- 
stantly improving and advancing, they stand still in 
the old ruts. It is this power as well as disposi- 
tion for illimitable growth, that distinguishes the 



398 OUR NEW WEST. 

European races in contrast with, the Asiatic, who 
seem to have been cast in an iron mould ages old. 
The superior men of the Chinese have somewhat the 
same limitation, though their type is broader and 
higher than the rest. They are mostly merchants, 
supplying their countrymen, and also dealing heavily 
in teas and silks with the Americans and Europeans 
here. They are generally men of personal and busi- 
ness honor, with aristocratic manners and impressive 
presence, and are much respected by the American 
citizens. Grouped around these as leaders or mana- 
gers are gathered all the Chinese on the Coast. They 
are divided into six different companies, representing 
the different sections or localities in China from which 
they came ; each company has head-quarters in San 
Francisco, to which all its followers resort for assist- 
ance and protection ; and the managers send out for 
new immigrants, or return those who wish to go back 
to their homes, and engage to transmit the bodies of 
those who die for burial in China. They act, indeed, 
as jobbers in Chinese labor, and guardians of the in- 
terests of their countrymen in America. 

The occupations of these people are various. There 
is hardly anything in the way of manual labor that 
they cannot turn their hands to, — the work of women 
as well as men. They do the washing and ironing 
for the whole population ; and sprinkle the clothes as 
they iron them, by squirting water over them in a 
fine spray from their mouths. Everywhere, in village 
and town, you see rude signs informing you that See 
Hop, or Ah Thing, or Sam Sing, or Wee Lung, or 
Cum Sing, wash and iron; How Tie is a doctor, and 



WHAT THE CHINESE DO. 399 

Hop Chang and Chi Lung keep stores. They are 
good house servants ; cooks, table-waiters, and nurses; 
better, on the whole, than Irish girls, and as cheap, — 
fifteen to twenty-five dollars a month and board. 
One element of their usefulness as cooks is their 
genius for imitation; show them once how to do a 
thing, and their education is perfected; no repetition 
of the lesson is needed. But they seem to be more 
in use as house servants in the country than the city ; 
they do not share the passion of the Irish girls for 
herding together, and appear to be content to be alone 
in a house, in a neighborhood, or a town. 

Good farm hands are the Chinese, also; in the sim- 
pler and routine mechanic arts they have proven 
adepts; in fact, there is hardly any branch of plain 
labor in which, under proper tuition, they do not or 
cannot succeed most admirably. The great success 
of the woolen manufacture here is due to the admir- 
able adaptation and comparative cheapness of Chinese 
labor for the details. They are quick to learn, quiet, 
cleanly and faithful, and have no " ofi" days," no sprees 
to get over. As factory operatives they receive 
twenty and twenty-five dollars a month, and board 
themselves, though quarters are provided for them on 
the mill grounds. Fish, vegetables, rice and pork are 
the main food, which is prepared and eaten with such 
economy that they live for about one-third what 
Yankee laborers can. Four or five hundred of the 
Chinamen are employed in the San Francisco woolen 
mills; there are two thousand of them makino^ ci£>:ars 
in the same city ; and seven hundred and fifty are 
enrolled washermen. Indeed, they are participating 



400 OUR NEW WEST. 

in all the various big and little manufactures that are so 
rapidly springing up in San Francisco; and their 
cheap and reliable labor lies at the bottom of the 
diversified manufacturing wealth of California. 

Many are vegetable gardeners, too. In this even 
climate and with this productive soil, their painstak- 
ing culture, much hoeing and constant watering, 
make little ground very fruitful, and they gather 
in three, four and five crops a year. Their garden 
patches, in the neighborhood of cities and villages, 
are always distinguishable from the rougher and 
more carelessly cultured grounds of their Saxon 
rivals. But the greater number, as many as thirty 
thousand it is estimated, are gleaners in the gold 
fields of the interior. They follow in crowds after 
the white miners, working and washing over their 
deserted or neglected sands, and thriving on results 
that their predecessors would despise. A Chinese 
gold washer is content with one to two dollars a day; 
while the white man starves or moves on disgusted 
with twice that. A very considerable portion of the 
present gold production of California must now be 
the work of Chinese painstaking and moderate ambi- 
tion. The traveler meets these Chinese miners every- 
where on his road through the State ; at work in the 
deserted ditches, or moving from one to another, on 
foot with their packs, or often in the stage, sharing 
the seats and paying the price of their aristocratic 
Saxon rivals. 

But for the Chinese, too, the Pacific Railroad must 
have been delayed some years, and cost a third more 
money. Substantially, the grading of the whole road, 



PERSECUTION OF THE CHINESE. 401 

through California and Nevada, was done by them; 
and as many as twelve thousand were employed upon 
the work at once during the last year. Their wages 
were about one dollar a day and board, which was 
half the cost of ordinary white labor. This is the 
usual proportion between the wages of the Chinese 
and other laborers; and though the former are not 
so strong as the Americans and Europeans, lack the 
force and flexibility of the latter, and fail in execu- 
tive or superintending duties, yet they are so deft 
in details, so patient and plodding in their industry, 
so reliable and prompt always, that their work is, on 
the whole, worth about as much as that of the whites 
with whom they compete. 

Labor, cheap labor, being the one great palpable 
need of the Pacific States, — far more, indeed, than 
capital the want and necessity of their prosperity, — 
we should all say that these Chinese would be wel- 
comed on every hand, their emigration encouraged, 
and themselves protected by law. Instead of which, 
we see them the victims of all sorts of prejudice and 
injustice. Ever since they began to come here, even 
now, it is a disputed question with the public, whether 
they should not be forbidden our shores. They do 
not ask or wish for citizenship ; they show no ambi- 
tion to become voters ; but they are even denied pro- 
tection in persons and property by the law. Their 
testimony is inadmissible against the white man ; 
and, as miners, they have long been subject to a tax 
of four dollars a month, or nearly fifty dollars a year, 
each, for the benefit of the County and State treasuries. 
Thus ostracised and burdened by the State, they, of 



402 OUR NEW WEST. 

course, have been the victims of much meanness and 
cruelty from individuals. To abuse and cheat a China- 
man ; to rob him ; to kick and cuff him ; even to kill 
him, have been things not only done with impunity 
by mean and wicked men, but even with vain glory. 
Terrible are some of the cases of robbery and wanton 
maiming and murder reported from the mining dis- 
tricts. Had "John," — here and in China alike the 
English and Americans nickname every Chinaman 
" John," — a good claim, original or improved, he was 
ordered to " move on," — it belonged to somebody else. 
Had he hoarded a pile, he was ordered to disgorge ; 
and, if he resisted, he was killed. Worse crimes even 
are known against them ; they have been wantonly 
assaulted and shot down or stabbed by bad men, as 
sportsmen would surprise and shoot their game in 
the woods. There was no risk in such barbarity ; if 
" John " survived to tell the tale, the law would not 
hear him or believe him. Nobody was so low, so 
miserable, that he did not despise the Chinaman, and 
could not outrage him. Ross Browne has an illus- 
tration of the status of poor "John," that is quite 
to the point. A vagabond Indian comes upon a 
solitary Chinaman, working over the sands of a de- 
serted gulch for gold. ^^Dish is my land," — says he, 
— ^^^you pay me fifty dollar." The poor Celestial 
turns, deprecatingly, saying : " Melican man (Ameri- 
can) been here, and took all, — no bit left." Indian, 

irate and fierce, — " D Melican man, — you pay 

me fifty dollar, or I killee you." 

There is now a steadily growing improvement in 
public opinion on this question, however. It is less 



SLOW JUSTICE TO "JOHN." 403 

popular to curse and persecute the Chinese than it 
was; and the benefits conferred by their labor are 
more and more realized and confessed. In some 
branches of work they unquestionably come in com- 
petition with white labor, both male and female, and 
tend to degrade its character and cheapen its price; 
but it is so clear that, except for them, many interests, 
now prosperous, never could have been developed; 
much wealth, now secure, never could have been har- 
vested; many public improvements, now complete or 
in progress, would hardly be thought of, except as 
unattainable, that their value and their necessity 
stand vindicated and acknowledged. The clamor 
against them is mainly based upon the prejudices 
and jealousy of ignorant white laborers, — the Irish 
particularly, — who regard the Chinese as rivals in 
their field, and clothes itself in the plausible conceit 
about this being a "white man's country," and no 
place for Africans or Asiatics. But without regarding 
fealty to our national democratic principle of welcom- 
ing hither the people of every country and clime, the 
white man of America needs the negro and the Chi- 
naman quite as much as they need him; the pocket 
appeal will override the prejudices of his soul, — and 
we shall do a sort of rough justice to both classes, 
because it will pay. 

There is no ready assimilation of the Chinese with 
our habits and modes of thought and action. Their 
simple, narrow, though not dull minds, have run too 
long in the old grooves to be easily turned off. They 
look down even with contempt upon our newer and 
rougher civilization, regarding us barbaric in fact, and 



404 OUR NEW WEST. 

calling us in their hearts, if not in speech, " the foreign 
devils." And our conduct towards them has inevit- 
ably intensified these feelings, — it has driven them 
back upon their naturally self-contained natures and 
habits. So they bring here and retain all their home 
ways of living and dressing, their old associations and 
religion. Their streets and quarters in town and city 
are China reproduced, unalleviated. Missionaries 
have found it hard, slow work to make progress 
among them with our education and our religion. 
But latterly an entering wedge has been made with 
Sunday schools and evening schools for teaching the 
English language. The latter appeal especially to a 
necessity of their success among us, and several hun- 
dreds are now gathered in attendance upon these 
schools. It is also proposed to found in San Fran- 
cisco a high school or college for thoroughly edu- 
cating such of the Chinese as wish, in our language 
and science. 

But as laborers in our manufactories and as ser- 
vants in our houses, besides their constant contact 
with our life and industry otherwise, these emigrants 
from the East cannot fail to get enlargement of 
ideas, freedom and novelty of action, and familiarity 
with and then preference for our higher civilization. 
Slowly and hardly, but still surely this work must 
go on ; and their constant going back and forth be- 
tween here and China must also transplant new ele- 
ments of thought and action into the home circles. 
Thus it is that we may hope and expect to reach 
this great people with the influences of our better 
and higher life. It is through modification and rev- 



MORALS AND RELIGION OF THE CHINESE. 405 

olution in materialities, in manner of living, in man- 
ner of doing, that we shall pave the way for our 
thought and our religion. Our missionaries to the 
Five Points have learned to attack first with soap 
and water and clean clothes. The Chinese that come 
here are unconsciously besieged with better food and 
more of it than they have at home. The bath-house 
and the restaurant are the avant couriers of Christian 
civilization. 

The morals and the religion of these Chinese are as 
much an anomaly to the American mind as the singu- 
lar contrast of their mental attainment and mental 
limitation. Their literature overflows with a senti- 
mental moralism. The "be good and you will be 
happy " philosophy they know by heart. The wisdom 
of Confucius is on all their lips. But they are mean 
and nasty in their vices; cunning, revengeful and 
wicked in their differences with each other. Assas- 
sination is not uncommon among them. Leavino- 
their wives at home, they import Chinese prostitutes, 
like merchandise, and fight among each other for the 
possession of them. In many cases these base women 
are taken as a sort of temporary wives, and children 
are reared by them. But as a rule there are no 
Chinese homes here. They live in close quarters, 
not coarsely filthy like ignorant and besotted Irish, 
but bearing a savor of inherent and refined unclean- 
liness that is almost more disgusting. Their whole 
civilization impresses me as a low, disciplined, per- 
fected, sensuous sensualism. Everything in their life 
and their habits seems cut and dried like their food. 
There is no sign of that abandonment to an emotion, 
25 



406 OUR NEW WEST. 

to a passloiij good or bad, that marks the western 
races. Their great vice is gambling; that is going 
on constantly in their houses and shops; and com- 
mercial women and barbaric music minister to its 
indulgence. Cheap lotteries are a common form of 
this passion. Opium-smoking ranks next; and this 
is believed to be indulged in more extensively among 
them here than at home, since there is less restraint 
from relatives and authorities, and the means of pro- 
curing the article are greater. The wildly brilliant 
eye, the thin, haggard face, and the broken nervous 
system, betray the victim to opium-smoking ; and all 
tense, all excited, staring in eye and expression, he 
was almost a frightful object, as we peered in through 
the smoke of his half-lighted little room, and saw him 
lying on his mat in the midst of his fatal enjoyment. 
The Chinese have no Sunday; they are ready to 
work seven days in the week, if it is desired, and they 
are paid for it. Their religion is the Buddhistic 
idolatry of India ; and on their holidays, or occasions 
of death or departure of friends, they worship, in a 
cheap, sentimental way, various graven images in 
their little " Josh " Houses, that are, in style and or- 
nament, an exaggeration of the ruder chapels among 
an ignorant Romish peasantry. These "Josh" Houses 
are not numerous, but seem to be run on commercial 
principles for whoever can own or control them. 
There are no public gatherings in them, — no forms 
of public worship, — only individual offerings of gifts 
to the gods, — or their owners, — with the burning of 
candles, and similar childish rites. The whole matter 
of the Chinese religion seems very negative and in- 



A GRAND CHINESE DINNER. 407 

conclusive ; and apparently it has very little hold 
upon them. There is no fanaticism in it^ — no appre- 
ciable degree of earnestness about it. 

The impressions these people make upon the Amer- 
ican mind, after close observation of their habits, are 
very mixed and contradictory. They unite to many 
of the attainments and knowledge of the highest civ- 
ilization, in some of which they are models for our- 
selves, many of the incidents and most of the ignor- 
ance of a simple barbarism. It may yet prove that 
we have as much to learn from them as they from us. 
Certainly here in this great field, this western half of 
our Continental Nation, their diversified labor is a 
blessing and a necessity. It is all, perhaps more 
even, than the Irish and the Africans have been and 
are to our Eastern wealth and progress. At the first, 
at least, they have greater adaptability and perfection 
than either of these classes of laborers, to whom we 
are so intimately and sometimes painfully accustomed. 

The managers of the six Chinese companies and 
the leading Chinese merchants of San Francisco all 
hold friendly relations with the leading citizens and 
public men of California. Occasionally, when dis- 
tinguished people are visiting here, they extend to 
them the courtesy of a grand Chinese dinner. Such 
honor was proffered to Mr. Colfax and his companions. 
The preliminary formalities were stately and exten- 
sive, — they would have sufficed for a banquet of the 
royal sovereigns of Europe, or the pacification of the 
ambitions and jealousies of the first families of Vir- 
ginia; but when these were finally adjusted, ques- 
tions of precedence among the Chinese settled, and a 



408 OUR NEW WEST. 

proper choice made among the many Americans who 
were eager to be bidden to the feast, all went as 
smooth as a town school examination that the teacher 
has been drilling for a month previous. 

The party numbered from fifty to sixty, half Chi- 
nese, half white citizens. The dinner was given in 
the second story of a Chinese restaurant, in a leading 
street of the city. Our hosts were fine-looking men, 
with impressive manners. While their race generally 
seem not more than two-thirds the size of our Amer- 
ican men, these were nearly if not quite as tall and 
stout as their guests. Their eyes and their faces 
beamed with intelligence; they were quick to per- 
ceive everything, and alert and aufait in all courtesies 
and politeness. An interpreter was present for the 
heavy talking; but most of our Chinese entertainers 
spoke a little English, and we got on well enough so 
far as that was concerned; though hand-shaking and 
bowing and scraping and a general flexibility of coun- 
tenance, bodies and limbs had a very large share of 
the conversation to perform. Neither here nor in 
China is it common for the English and Americans to 
learn the Chinese language. The Chinese can and 
do more readily acquire ours, sufficiently at least for 
all business intercourse. Their broken or '^pigeon" 
English, as it is called, is often very grotesque, and 
always very simple. Here is a specimen,— a "pigeon- 
English" rendering of "My name is Norval," etc.: — 

My namee being Norval topside that Glampian Hillee, 

My father you sabee my father, makee pay chow-chow he sheep, 

He smallo heartee man, too muchee take care that dolla, gallo? 

So fashion he wantchee keep my, counta one piece chilo stope he own side, 



AT THE DINNER TABLE. 409 

My no wantchee long that largee mandoli, go knockee alia man; 

Littee turn Joss pay my what thing my father no like pay 

That mourn last nightee get up loune, alia same my hat, 

No go full up, no got square ; that plenty piece 

That lobbie man, too muchee qui-si, alia same that tiger. 

Chop-chop come down that hillee, catchie that sheep long that cow, 

That man, custom take care, too muchie quick lun away. 

My one piecie owne spee eye, look see that ladlone man what side he 

walkee, 
Hi-yah! No good chancie, findie he, lun catchie my flew: 
Too piecie loon choon lun catchie that lobbie man ! he 
No can walkee welly quick, he pocket too much full up. 
So fashion knockee he largee. 

He head man no got shutte far 
My knockie he head, Hi-yah ! my No. 1 strong man, 
Catchie he jacket, long he toousa, galo! You likee look see? 
My no likee takee care that sheep, so fashion my hear you got fightee 

this side. 
My takee one servant, come your country, come helpie you. 
He heart all same cow, too muchie fear lun away. 
Masquie, Joss take care pay my come your house. 

We were seated for the dinner about little round 
tables, six to nine at each table, and hosts and guests 
evenly distributed. There was a profusion of ele- 
gant China ware on each table ; every guest had two 
or three plates and saucers, all delicate and small. 
Choice sauces, pickles, sweetmeats and nuts were also 
plentifully scattered about. Each guest had a saucer 
of flowers, a China spoon or bowl with a handle, and 
a pair of chop-sticks, little round and smooth ivory 
sticks about six inches long. Chi Sing-Tong, Presi- 
dent of the San Yup Company, presided at Mr. Col- 
fax's table. 

Now the meal began. It consisted of three differ- 
ent courses, or dinners rather, between which was a 



410 OUR NEW WEST. ^ 

recess of half an hour, when we redred to an ante- 
room, smoked and talked, and listened to the simple 
rough, barbaric music of a coarse guitar, viol drum 
and violin, and meanwhile the tables were reset and 
new food provided. 

Each course or dinner comprised a dozen to twenty 
different dishes, served generally one at a time, though 
sometimes two were brought on at once. There were 
no joints, nothing to be carved. Every article of food 
was brought on in quart bowls, in a sort of hash form. 
"We dove into it with our chop-sticks, which, well han- 
dled, took up about a mouthful, and, transferring this 
to our plates, worked the chop-sticks again to get it 
or parts of it to our mouths. No one seemed to take 
more than a single taste or mouthful of each dish ; so 
that, even if one relished the food, it would need 
something like a hundred different dishes to satisfy 
an ordinary appetite. Some of us took very readily 
to the chop-sticks ; others did not, — perhaps were glad 
they could not; and for these a Yankee fork was pro- 
vided, and our Chinese neighbors at the table were 
also prompt to offer their own chop-sticks to place a 
bit of each dish upon our plates. But as these same 
chop-sticks were also used to convey food into the 
mouths of the Chinese, the service did not always 
add to the relish of the food. 

These were the principal dishes served for the first 
course, and in the order named : Fried shark's fins and 
grated ham, stewed pigeon with bamboo soup, fish 
sinews with ham, stewed chicken with water-cress, 
sea-weed, stewed ducks and bamboo soup, sponge 
cake, omelet cake, flower cake and banana fritters, 



WHAT AND HOW WE ATE. 411 

bird-nest soup, tea. The meats seemed all alike; 
they had been dried or preserved in some way; were 
cut up into mouthfuls, and depended for all savori- 
ness upon their accompaniments. The sea-weed, 
shark's fins and the like had a glutinous sort of taste ; 
not repulsive, nor very seductive. The sweets were 
very delicate, but like everything else had a positive- 
ly artificial flavor; every article, indeed, seemed to 
have had its original and real taste and strength dried 
or cooked out of it, and a common Chinese flavor put 
into it. The bird-nest soup looked and tasted some- 
what as a very delicate vermicelli soup does. The 
tea was delicious, — it was served without milk or 
sugar, did not need any such amelioration, and was 
very refreshing. Evidently it was made from the 
most delicate leaves or flowers of the tea plant, and 
had escaped all vulgar steeping or boiling. 

During the first recess, the presidents of the com- 
panies, — the chief entertainers, — took their leave, and 
the prominent Chinese merchants assumed the post 
of leading hosts; such being the fashion of the peo- 
ple. The second dinner opened with cold tea, and a 
white, rose-scented liquor, very strong, and served in 
tiny cups, and went on with lichens and a fungus- 
like moss, more shark's fins, stewed chestnuts and 
chickens, Chinese oysters, yellow and resurrected 
from the dried stage, more fungus stewed, a stew of 
flour and white nuts, stewed mutton, roast ducks, rice 
soup, rice and ducks' eggs and pickled cucumbers, 
ham and chicken soup. Between the second and 
third parts, there was an exchange of complimentary 
speeches by the head Chinaman and Mr. Colfax, at 



412 OUR NEW WEST. 

which the interpreter had to officiate. The third and 
last course consisted of a great variety of fresh fruits ; 
and the unique entertainment ended about eleven 
o'clock, after a sitting of full five hours. The Ameri- 
can resident guests furnished champagne and claret, 
and our Chinese hosts, invariably at the entrance and 
departure of each dish, invited us, with a gracious 
bow, to a sip of the former, in which they all faith- 
fully and with evident relish joined themselves. 

The dinner was unquestionably a most magnifi- 
cent one after the Chinese standard ; the dishes were 
many of them rare and expensive ; and everything 
was served in elegance and taste. It was a curious 
and interesting experience, and one of the rarest of 
the many courtesies extended to Mr. Colfax on this 
coast. But as to any real gastronomic satisfaction 
to be derived from it, I certainly "did not see it." 
Governor Bross's fidelity to the great principle of 
" when you are among the Romans to do as the Ro- 
mans do," led him to take the meal seriatim, and eat 
of everything; but my own personal experience is 
perhaps the best commentary to be made upon the 
meal, as a meal. I went to the table weak and hun- 
gry; but I found the one universal odor and flavor 
soon destroyed all appetite ; and I fell back resign- 
edly on a constitutional incapacity to use the chop- 
sticks, and was sitting with a grim politeness through 
dinner number two, when there came an angel in 
disguise to my relief The urbane chief of police of 
the city appeared and touched my shoulder : " There 
is a gentleman at the door who wishes to see you, 
and would have you bring your hat and coat." There 



THE DINNER AND THE CHINESE SUMMED UP. 413 

were visions of violated City ordinances and " assist- 
ing" at the police court next morning. I thought, too, 
what a polite way this man has of arresting a stranger 
to the city. But, bowing my excuses to my pig-tail 
neighbor, I went joyfully to the unknown tribunal. 
A friend, a leading banker, who had sat opposite to 
me during the evening, and had been called out a 
few moments before, welcomed me at the street door 

with : " B , I knew you were suffering, and were 

hungry, — let us go and get something to eat, — a good 
square meal!" So we crossed to an American res- 
taurant; the lost appetite came back; and mutton- 
chops, squabs, fried potatoes and a bottle of cham- 
pagne soon restored us. My friend insisted that the 
second course of the Chinese dinner was only the 
first warmed over, and that that was the object of 
the recess. However that might be, — this is how I 
went to the grand Chinese dinner, and went out, 
when it was two-thirds over, and " got something to 
eat." 

Every visitor to San Francisco will be piqued with 
the presence of these Orientals and the problems they 
suggest. He will be tempted to peep into their quar- 
ters, attend one of their theaters, look in at the brazen 
altars and idols of their "Josh" Houses, — certainly 
be seduced into their attractive stores, where genuine 
Chinese silks and Chinese wares are set out by first 
hands, and sold by Chinese grandees for the highest 
prices they will fetch. He will see that, though our 
American and European laborers quarrel with and 
abuse these strange people ; though the law gives 
them no rights, but that of suffering punishment; 



414 OUR NEW WEST. 

though they bring no families, and seek no citizen- 
ship ; though all the Chinese women here are not 
only commercial, but expressly imported as such; 
though they are mean and contemptible in their 
vices as in their manners ; though they are despised 
and kicked about on every hand ; still they come and 
thrive, slowly improve their physical and moral and 
mental conditions, and supply this country with the 
greatest necessity for its growth and prosperity, — 
cheap labor. What we shall do with them is not 
quite clear yet ; how they are to rank, socially, civilly 
and politically, among us is one of the nuts for our 
social science students to crack, — if they can; but 
now that we have depopulated Ireland, and Germany 
is holding on to its own, and so the old sources of our 
labor supply are drying up, all America needs them, 
and, obeying the great natural law of demand and 
supply, Asia seems almost certain to pour upon and 
over us countless thousands of her superfluous, cheap- 
keeping, slow-changing, unassimilating, but very use- 
ful laborers. And we shall welcome, and then quarrel 
over and with them, as we have done with their Irish 
predecessors. Our vast grain, cotton and fruit fields; 
our extending system of public works ; our multiply- 
ing system of manufactures, all need and can employ 
them. But must they vote ; and if so, to what effect? 



XXII. 

MINING IN CALIFORNIA. 

California the Child of Gold — Her Total Production and Present Yield 
— The Mineral Belt of the State — The Different Processes of Mining 
— The Dead Kivers, the Deep Diggings and Hydraulic Mining — The 
Quartz Mines and Mills — The Fremont Fizzle in Mariposa — The 
Increasing Reliability of Mining as a Business — The Providence in 
the Gold and Silver Discoveries — Their Mission Nearly Over — 
Decrease in the Production of the Precious Metals in America and 
the World — Valuable Statistics on the Subject — The Other Mineral 
Wealth of California. 

California is the child of gold, and, though only 
twenty years old, has outgrown her parentage, and 
depends more upon agriculture, commerce and manu- 
factures than upon mining for her prosperity. Yet 
in these twenty years, she has added eight hundred 
millions of dollars in gold to the world's wealth, and is 
still producing every year about twenty-five millions. 
No other State or Territory yet produces so much 
yearly as California still does ; and though mining is 
now her third or fourth interest, she is, and is likely 
long to be, not only from her past but by her present 
and continuing production^ the leading and representa- 
tive mining State of the Nation. Her greatest yield of 
gold was in 1853, when the production ran up to sixty 



418 OUR NEW WEST. 

millions of dollars, since which time it has been gradu- 
ally falling to twenty-five millions a year, where it 
seems to be stationary. Her gold-bearing territory 
lies along the whole western slope of the Sierra Ne- 
vada Mountains ; but it is richest in the central coun- 
ties. The maps of five years ago show this section 
crowded with the names of mining villages, while all 
the rest of the State seemed bare of settlements; 
but now half of these are wholly deserted, and the 
others, with few exceptions, are in a decaying con- 
dition, with many houses and stores unoccupied, 
and often with only a small proportion of their old 
populations. Many of those who remain in them 
have turned their attention to other pursuits ; and 
though the population of the twelve principal min- 
ing counties shows a falling off of from one hun- 
dred and forty thousand to one hundred and thirteen 
thousand only since 1860, it is fair to state that no 
more than half as many people are now engaged in 
mining in California as in 1860. 

The great mineral belt of California bears no silver; 
it is on the opposite slopes of the Mountains, in Ne- 
vada, that the silver ore predominates ; and though 
it is more than twenty years since the first discoveries 
were made, still the greater portion of California's pro- 
duction is obtained from the sand and gravel wash- 
ings rather than the quartz rock deposits. The lat- 
ter is of course the original and natural condition of 
the precious metals. But so grandly has Nature 
worked in California in rqducing the gold-bearing 
rock to powder, and leaving the gold particles free 
in the beds of rivers, dead and alive, under the eaves 



WASHING FOR GOLD. 419 

of the mountains, that there seems to be more wealth 
of mineral lying in this form than in the original 
rock. Washing with water is the universal means 
of getting at these deposits of the gold. But the 
scale on which this work is done, and the instrument- 
alities of application vary, from the simple hand- 
pan and pick and shovel of the individual and 
original miner, operating along the banks of a little 
stream, to grand combination enterprises for chang- 
ing the entire course of a river, running shafts down 
hundreds of feet to get into the beds of long-ago 
streams, and bringing water through ditches and 
flumes and great pipes for ten or twenty miles, 
wherewith to wash down a hill -side of golden 
gravel, and get at its precious particles. The 
simple individual pan-washers have mostly " moved 
on" for the richer surface sands of Idaho and Mon- 
tana; what of this sort of gold seeking remains in 
California is iu the hands of patient and plodding 
"John Chinaman," who works over the neglected 
sands of his predecessors, and is content to reap 
as harvest a dollar's worth a day. 

But all the forms of gold- washing run into each 
other, and companies of two or three, sometimes of 
Chinamen, with capitals of hundreds of dollars, buy 
a sluice claim or seize a deserted bed, and with shovel 
and pick and small stream of water, run the sands 
over and over through the sluice-ways, and at end of 
day, or week, or month, gather up the deposits of gold 
on the bottoms and at the ends of their sluices. From 
this, operations ascend to a magnitude involving hun- 
dreds of thousands of dollars, and employing hundreds 



420 OUK NEW WEST. 

of men as partners or day laborers for the managers. 
Sometimes, too, the enterprise is divided, and compa- 
nies are organized that furnish the water alone, and 
sell it out to the miners or washers according to their 
wants. The raising of auriferous sands and gravel 
from the deeply covered beds of old streams, by run- 
ning shafts down and tunnels out into and through 
such beds^ and then washing them over, is called 
"Deep Diggings," or "Bed-rock Diggings," and in their 
pursuit the bottoms of ancient rivers will be followed 
through the country for mile after mile, and many 
feet below the present surface of the earth. The min- 
ers in this fashion go down till they reach the bed- 
rock, along which the water originally ran, and here 
they find the richest deposits. These dead rivers are 
not dry, open beds, be it understood, but huge strata 
of sand, gravel and quartz, filling up what were once 
river channels, and lying now from a hundred to a 
thousand feet beneath the foot-hills of the mountains. 
They lie parallel with the mountains and diagonally 
to the rivers now coming out of the mountains ; they 
were sponged up and filled up by the upheaval of 
the mountains; and their place was made known by 
the modern streams cutting down through them, re- 
vealing on the walls of the canyons the peculiar gold- 
bearing materials that now occupy their beds. Out 
of these dead rivers, three hundred millions of gold 
have been taken, and they still yield eight millions a 
year. 

Kindred with the work upon these deep diggings 
is what is known as Hydraulic Mining, in which 
powerful streams of water are brought to bear on 



THE HYDKAULIC MINING. 421 

great masses or hills of soil above the supposed gold 
deposits, with such force as to tear them down and 
wash them away with a rapidity that shames shovels 
and wheelbarrows. The water is brought long dis- 
tances from mountain lakes or rivers, through ditches 
and flumes, sometimes supported by trestle-work fifty 
to one hundred feet high, to near the theater of 
operations. Then it is let from flumes into large and 
stout iron pipes, which grow gradually smaller and 
smaller; out of these it is passed into hose, like that 
of a fire engine, and through this it is fired with a 
terrible force into the bank or bed of earth, which is 
speedily torn down, and washed, with resistless, sepa- 
rating power, into narrow beds or sluices in the lower 
valleys, and as it goes along these, hindered and 
seduced at various points, the more solid gold particles 
deposit themselves. Usually, in large operations of 
this kind, the main stream of water is divided in the 
final discharging hose into two or more streams, which 
spout out into the hill-side as if from several fire 
engines, only with immensely more force. One of 
the streams would instantly kill man or animal that 
should get before it, and frequent serious and even 
fatal accidents occur from this cause. Near Dutch 
Flat, where extensive hydraulic mining is in progress, 
a water company taps lakes twelve to twenty miles 
off in the mountains, and turns whole rivers into its 
ditches; and as further illustration of its majestic 
operations, we learned that it spent eighty thousand 
dollars in one year in building a new ditch, and yet 
made and divided one hundred and twenty thousand 
dollars in additional profits that same year. Up near 



422 OUR NEW WEST. 

Yreka, in northern California, a ditch thirty miles 
long, and costing two hundred thousand dollars, was 
constructed for this business ; but in this instance the 
enterprise did not prove profitable. 

The extent of the operations of this description 
may be inferred from the fact, that there are in the 
State over six thousand miles of artificial ditches for 
carrying water to the gold-washings, which cost over 
fifteen millions of dollars. Some of the investments 
of this sort have paid grand profits; others have been 
ruinous failures. But increased certainty is being 
secured to this form of gold seeking; new and exten- 
sive enterprises in it are added every year; and it bids 
fair to long continue as the most productive phase 
of mining in the State. The returns obtained in 
some cases of extensive deep diggings and hydraulic 
mining are very great. A thousand dollars a day are 
often washed out by a company holding rich soil and 
employing a large force; and "runs of several weeks" 
averaging fifty dollars and one hundred dollars a day, 
to the hand, are frequently recorded. A single "clean- 
ing up," after a few weeks' washing in a rich place, 
has produced fifty thousand dollars in gold dust and 
nu2:2:ets : and in other cases, even one hundred thou- 
sand dollars are reported. 

Of course all these enterprises create a wide waste 
in their path. Tornado, flood, earthquake and vol- 
cano combined could hardly make greater havoc, 
spread wider ruin and wreck, than are to be seen 
everywhere in the track of the larger gold-washing 
operations. None of the interior streams of Califor- 
nia, though naturally pure as crystal, escape th^ 



"YUBA dam" THE QUARTZ GOLD. 423 

change to a thick yellow mud, from this cause, early 
in their progress out of the hills. The Sacramento 
is worse than the Missouri. Many of the streams are 
turned out of their original channels, either directly 
for mining purposes, or in consequence of the great 
masses of soil and gravel that come down from the 
gold-washings above. Thousands of acres of fine 
land along their banks are ruined forever by the de- 
posits of this character. There are no rights which 
mining respects in California. It is the one supreme 
interest. A farmer may have his whole estate turned 
to a barren waste by a flood of sand and gravel from 
some hydraulic mining up stream; more, if a fine 
orchard or garden stands in the way of the working 
of a rich gulch or bank, orchard and garden must go. 
Then the torn-down, dug-out, washed to pieces and 
then washed over side-hills, that have been or are 
being subjected to the hydraulics of the miners, are 
the very devil's chaos, indeed. The country is full 
of them among the mining districts of the Sierra 
Nevada foot-hills, and they are truly a terrible blot 
upon the fixce of nature. The valley of the Yuba, 
a branch of the Sacramento, was one of the worst 
illustrations our journeying has presented; and when 
we came to the sign over the "grocery" of a now 
deserted mining camp, indicating that this was "Yuba 
Dam," we thought of the famous anecdote connected 
with this name, from its repetition, without the benefit 
of spelling, to ai\. inquiring colporteur, and were fain 
to confess that the profane compound fairly repre- 
sented the spirit of the lawless miner. 

The quartz mines are mostly in the same neighbor- 
26 



424 OUR NEW WEST. 

hoods with present or past gold-washings ; in the hills 
back and above the rich stream beds and gravel banks. 
Theirs is the universal and familiar process of all 
rock mining, following the rich veins into the bowels 
of the earth with pick and powder, crushing the rock, 
and seducing the infinitesimal atoms of metal from 
the dusty, powdered mass. The gold in the California 
quartz is generally free from sulphur ets or pyrites, 
and is worked in the simplest manner. It is also 
nearly uniform in its value, where valuable enough 
to pay for working ; that of the best and most profit- 
able mines yielding from twelve to seventeen dollars 
a ton. But ore yielding only eight and ten dollars a 
ton can often be profitably worked. Ore worth over 
fifty dollars a ton is very rare, and is found only in 
small quantities. There are now over four hundred 
quartz mills in existence in the State, using ^yq 
thousand stamps, and costing about six millions of 
dollars. Many of these, — how large a proportion it is 
impossible to say, but probably a great majority, — 
are idle part or all the time; and the total annual 
production of the quartz-mining of the State is not 
more than a third of the whole gold product, or say 
seven millions a year. It is increasing in amount, 
however, and in certainty. 

The most successful quartz-mining is in Amador and 
Nevada Counties ; and the Grass Valley district in 
the latter is peculiarly and persistently prosperous in 
this form of mining. It is almost the only mining 
locality in the State that has continued steadily to 
grow in wealth and population. Mariposa County 
is a sad ruin in comparison. Here is the famous 



THE MISSION OF THE MINES. 425 

Fremont property. Its mines have rarely paid a 
profit^ and now only two or three of them are being 
worked. The population is decreasing ; the few in- 
habitants that remain are only held together by a 
combination of hope and despair, and the slow intro- 
duction of agricultural operations; and much more 
money has been made on Mariposa stock and bonds 
in Wall Street than from Mariposa gold in California. 
Indeed, the only great capacity there ever seemed to 
be in the property here was in carrying an immense, 
a magnificent indebtedness. The illustration of the 
whole lies best, perhaps, in the sincere boast attributed 
to its most gallant but never thrifty original owner. 
"Why," said General Fremont, "when I came to 
California I was worth nothing, and now I owe two 
millions of dollars !" Yet there are certainly several 
of the mines, on this estate, that, if worked by pri- 
vate parties whose living depended upon success, 
would return a reliable and reasonable profit. 

There is an increasing permanency and reliability 
in the business of gold and silver mining in America, 
more especially in California. It is being reduced to 
a level with other industries; and though the degree 
of order and certainty, that belongs to agriculture and 
commerce and manufactures, can never attach to min- 
ing, it is forced to come into competition with them, 
and so to submit to the same general laws. One re- 
sult is, that, though there are fewer occasional rich 
returns, there are less fearful losses; and the demor- 
alizing influences of the business upon society are 
growing weaker and weaker. 

The grand mission of the gold and silver discoveries 



426 OUR NEW WEST. 

in all parts of this Western half of our Eepublic is 
realized in their settlement and civilization. No other 
passion than that excited by the presence of the pre- 
cious metals could have done this work so speedily and 
completely. But the possession secure, the States or- 
ganized, their share in the work declines, and other 
interests come in to sober the people, and lead them 
on to a higher civilization and a surer prosperity. 
The hand of a grand Design, of a wonderful Provi- 
dence may thus be seen in all the history of gold and 
silver mining on this Continent. The most remote 
and forbidding parts of our national domain are now 
under occupation and development through its leader, 
ship; and as fast as other interests come in, and each 
State becomes able to stand and grow without its stim> 
ulus, that element falls away and becomes secondary. 
The gold and silver production of America is now 
slowly decreasing. The falling off in California from 
sixty millions of dollars in 1853 to twenty-five mill- 
ions in 1866-7 and 8, has been made up by Nevada, 
Idaho, Colorado and Montana; and the production of 
the whole country was probably at its maximum in 
1866 or 1867, when the total yearly yield was about 
seventy-five millions of dollars. But since, there has 
been a certain and general decrease. The amount of 
gold and silver centering at San Francisco in 1868 
was not far from fifty millions of dollars ; made up in 
round numbers of twenty-five millions from California, 
seventeen from Nevada, two millions from Oregon and 
Washington, four millions from Idaho, and one million 
each from British Columbia and Arizona. Montana 
yielded perhaps eight millions, and Colorado two, — 



DECREASE IN THE GOLD PRODUCTION. 427 

these going East to market, — and making a gran^ ag- 
gregate of sixty millions, which, though perhaps not 
distributed with exactness in the above statement, un- 
doubtedly fully covers the whole production of the year. 
The White Pine discoveries in Nevada will probably 
no more than compensate for the falling off in the pro- 
duction of other sections of the same State ; and there 
is more probability that the gold and silver product 
of the United States will fall back to fifty millions 
than that it will rise again above sixty millions. Yet 
at no time before was the business so uniformly profit- 
able as now; there are fewer "grand strikes," but, on 
the contrary, much fewer terrible losses and wastes 
of labor and capital ; and henceforth there is reason 
to believe that the mining foi: the precious metals in 
America will pay a direct profit, which few students 
of the subject have been bold enough to claim for it 
heretofore. 

The same fact of decrease in the yield of gold and 
silver, that we thus perceive in America, is evidently 
true of other parts of the world. Australia, the great 
rival of California, has fallen off in the same propor- 
tion, or from sixty millions of dollars in gold in 1853 
to thirty millions in 1867. The total production of 
gold and silver in the world was in 1853 nearly two 
hundred millions of dollars; but in 1867 it was re- 
duced to one hundred and eighty millions, and prob- 
ably fell below one hundred and seventy-five millions 
in 1868. As the first rich gleanings of the surface 
deposits are exhausted, the production rapidly falls 
off; and the gold and silver era of 1848 to 1868, — in 
which three and a half billions of dollars' worth were 



428 OUK NEW WEST. 

added to tlie world's stock of the precious metals, — 
will probably never be repeated again. The depen- 
dence of the production upon quartz-mining and such 
similarly systematic and expensive processes as are 
involved in the hydraulic mining of Californiaj inevit- 
ably takes away the more abnormal elements from 
the business, and brings it into fair competition with 
the other avocations of man, and so necessarily limits 
the yield to the great laws of comparative supply and 
demand. 

California is rich in many minerals besides gold; 
but copper and quicksilver are the only others that 
she has produced to an exporting extent. Of these, 
she has exported an annual average of a million of 
dollars' worth each for the last ^we years; but the 
copper business is now depressed, and its export for 
1868 was but a quarter of a million of dollars, while 
the value of the quicksilver exported in that year 
was a million and a quarter. The New Almaden 
quicksilver mine of California has no rival in rich- 
ness and extent in the world but the old Almaden 
mine of Spain; and together they control the quick- 
silver markets everywhere. Deposits of coal, lead 
and iron are found in various parts of the State, but 
not of sufficiently good quality or large quantity to 
supply the home wants as yet. Better coal is found 
on the Northern Coast; but a large part of the supply 
for the steamships and for manufacturing purposes 
is brought around Cape Horn from the Atlantic States 
in sailing vessels. The State has gone through her 
petroleum fever ; at one time she thought herself su- 
premely rich in deposits of oil ; but hardly in a single 



CALIFOKNIA INDEPENDENT OF HER MINES. 429 

case has the boring for the luscious liquid been at- 
tended with profitable results. Few States are so 
richly endowed with mineral wealth as California; 
by it she was wakened into being ; but scarcely an- 
other State in the Nation is more independent of it 
now for her future growth and prosperity. 



XXIII. 

FARMING IN CALIFORNIA. 

The Eomance of California's Agriculture — Its History and its Pres- 
ent Condition — The Wheat Production — The Vineyards and the 
Wine — Mulberry Trees and Silk — The Vegetables and Fruit — The 
Culture of Oranges — The Nuts and Dried Fruits — The Cheapness 
of Production — The Strange Facts of Climate and Culture in Cali- 
fornia — Six Months of Seed-time and Six Months of Harvest — 
No Manure and No Turf in California — The Yield of Grain per 
Acre — The Wheat and its Flour — No Irrigation Required — The 
Moisture in the Soil — Land and its Price — The Need of Small 
Farms and Diversified Culture — The Growth of the Agricultural 
Counties — Advice to Emigrant Farmers. 

There is tlie same element of romance in the his- 
tory and character of the agriculture of California, 
that is seen in all else relating to her growth. The 
old Spanish missionaries proved the adaptability of 
her soil both to fruits and grains ; and thirty and 
forty years ago the Russian and English settlements 
in the North sent to them for their surplus wheat. 
The Mexican ranchero or herdsman followed the 
missionaries, and great droves of wild horses and 
cattle roamed over the Southern hills and valleys. 
Hides and beef fat became the staples of California 
commerce ; and up to 1849, these were the only ob- 



THE GROWTH OF WHEAT CULTURE. 431 

jects of attraction for American or European vessels. 
In that year the gold discoveries brought a new and 
strange population and broke up the habits of the 
old. The former could not believe that, with such a 
rainless, parching summer, agriculture was at all prac- 
ticable; while the lesser latter, who knew better, 
were swept into the eager hunt for gold ; so that for 
years California was fed on flour from New York. In 
1852, flour sold for $50 a barrel at wholesale in San 
Francisco, while among the mining camps its cost was 
almost fabulous, and a famine was threatened. Such 
prices and the disappointments of mining drove atten- 
tion back to the soil ; and by 1855, wheat-growing and 
grinding had become a considerable business, and by 
1858, the production had exceeded the home demand. 
From that time on, California has been an exporter 
of wheat; but not until 1866 did the business assume 
such proportions as to impress the grain markets of 
the world, and fairly revolutionize the industry of 
California. Then with a great crop came heavy de- 
mands from England; high prices and large profits 
resulted; and with true California vehemence the 
people rushed into wheat raising. The year 1867 
yielded a still larger crop, and the Eastern States 
were added to Europe as customers. The fever thus 
fed spread wider ; there was a great speculation 
in agricultural lands; the area of cultivation was 
immensely enlarged; a third favorable season was 
passed, and 1868 reahzed the largest wheat crop 
ever harvested in California, and she became one of 
the first three if not the very first wheat-growing 
State in the Union. Look at the revolution : in 



432 OUR NEW WEST. 

1848 the State raised nothing ; in 1858 just enough 
for her own population ; in 1864, a year of winter 
drouth, she had to send to Chili for supplies; and 
in 1868, she had the largest surplus of any State in 
the Republic ! The wheat crop of 1866 was fourteen 
millions of bushels, that of 1867 the same, and that of 
1868 at least fifteen millions and probably seventeen. 
With three continuous years of such crops, and im- 
proved harvests in Europe and the East in 1868, the 
supply exceeded the demand, prices fell away, and 
California carried over into 1869 a balance of wheat 
equal to her own wants for a full year, and is accept- 
ing the lesson that diversification in agriculture is as 
necessary to permanent profit as in any other pursuit. 
But though she has made wheat-growing her one 
great interest for two or three years, her other agri- 
cultural products are almost startling in rapidity of 
development and degree of attainment. The crop 
of barley, which is the staple feed for horses and 
cattle, for 1868 was between eight and nine millions 
of bushels ; that of oats between two and three mill- 
ions ; while the wool crop, which was less than half 
a million of pounds in 1865, and four millions in 1866, 
was in 1868 over fifteen millions of pounds; and 
potatoes yielded a million and a half of bushels ; but- 
ter over five millions of pounds ; cheese over three 
millions ; and hops over half a million. The receipts 
of agricultural produce at San Francisco during 1868 
amounted in value to near forty millions of dollars ; 
and the total value of the agricultural products of the 
State for that year is not unreasonably estimated at 
sixty millions of dollars, or twice and a half the value 



THE VINEYARDS AND WINE. 433 

of the products of the mines. Of these, over twenty 
millions' worth were exported, and the rest consumed 
or stored up at home. The chief items of the agri- 
cultural exports were, wheat and flour about twelve 
millions of dollars' worth, and wool two and a half 
millions of dollars' worth. 

After the grains and wool, in the agricultural 
wealth of California, come the vineyards. There is 
scarcely a limit to the possible production of the 
grape in the State. Her valleys and her foot-hills are 
alike favorable to its growth. The volcanic soil of 
the lower hills of the Sierra Nevadas is proving, in- 
deed, the most congenial home of the vine, and there, 
rather than in the Coast Valleys, which have here- 
tofore been the chief fields of its culture, is destined 
to be its greatest triumphs. The grape was intro- 
duced by the old missionaries, and in their choice 
locations it grew and flourished most luxuriantly. A 
notable vine in the southern part of the State is fif- 
teen inches thick, and bore in one year six thousand 
five hundred pounds of grapes. Until within a very 
few years there has been no other variety than that 
domesticated by the missionaries and known as the 
Mission grape. Nearly thirty millions of vines of 
this variety are now in bearing condition in the whole 
State ; they are capable of yielding fifteen millions of 
gallons of wine, and one million of gallons of brandy a 
year; but the wine production of 1868 was not over 
seven millions of gallons, though this was twice the 
yield of 18G6. Most of this is still held in the State, 
the export of wine for 1868 not exceeding a quarter 
of a million of dollars in value. 



434 OUR KEW WEST. 

The counties of Santa Clara, Sonoma and Napa 
near San Francisco, and of Los Angelos in the south- 
ern part of the State are at present the most forward 
in this business; but it is rapidly extending in all 
quarters, and more especially and promisingly in the 
districts under the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The 
vine and the mulberry are apparently destined to 
take the place of the mines in these districts, and 
stay their decay in wealth and population. The 
Mission grape varies in quality with the soil and cul- 
ture ; but everywhere it is strong and hearty, both as 
a vine and a fruit, and rich in all wine-making qual- 
ities. At first the wines were crude and coarse and 
heady; and they still lack the delicacy of the best 
European wines; but age and increased skill in the 
manufacture are exhibiting great improvements; and 
the California wines are early destined to a high and 
wide popularity. They already are distinguished for 
a high fruity flavor, a rich saccharine body, and a 
purity that the ease of culture and manufacture is 
likely to protect. New and better varieties of grape 
are rapidly coming into cultivation, and the admixture 
of these with the native, and the tempering of the viru- 
lence of the strong, fresh soil by use, will both fast 
contribute to the improvement of the wines and bran- 
dies of the State. The Catawba and the Isabella, the 
Muscat, Black Prince, White Malaga, Black Hamburg 
and Rose of Peru are already grown very extensively, 
and though the choicer of these varieties are thus 
far largely absorbed for eating, they will all speedily 
be so productive as to be used for wine-making. This 
last year (1868), these foreign varieties were sold for 



SILK, FRUIT AND VEGETABLES. 435 

wine-making in considerable quantities at two to three 
dollars per hundred pounds, or about double the price 
paid for the Mission grape. Grape-growing and wine- 
making are becoming two separate interests; the 
growers of the grapes selling the fruit by the pound 
or the juice by the gallon to the manufacturers, who 
have, in some cases, large and expensive establish- 
ments and machinery for the treatment of the prod- 
uct. Hock or white still wine, port, angelica, a 
sweet reddish wine, and champagne are the principal 
kinds of wine so far made; but sherries and clarets 
are being successfully introduced. At first hands, 
the white wine sells for twenty-five cents a gallon, 
the red wine for thirty to thirty-five, and port and 
angelica at sixty cents. 

Another interest, already firmly planted and rapidly 
extending, is that of silk-growing. Five millions of 
mulberry trees are now growing to furnish the food 
for the worms ; the chmate is favorable alike to tree 
and worm; and the production of silk cocoons, of 
which twenty-five thousand dollars' worth were sent 
to market in 1868, is certain to move as rapidly for- 
ward as wheat and wool-growing and wine-prod ucino- 
have done, and become a prominent element in the 
agricultural wealth of the State. 

The capacity of the State for fruits and vegetables 
of every variety has already been alluded to. Green 
garden food is in perpetual, inexhaustible supply; 
potatoes can be dug from the ground ten months in 
the year; beans and peas are green in the market 
from March to January; cabbages, lettuce, beets, 
celery, cauliflowers, artichokes, spinach, turnips, car- 



436 OUR NEW WEST. 

rotSj and parsnips, all stand green in the garden the 
year round; strawberries and tomatoes are ripening 
through eight months in the open air. All these 
reach their fullest perfection and grow to enormous 
size with the stimulus of a strong soil. We read of 
cabbages of seventy-five pounds, onions of four, tur- 
nips of twenty-six, and watermelons of eighty. As 
large a section of the State as all Massachusetts is 
favorable to orange culture ; and Los Angelos County 
has ten thousand trees in bearing condition, and one 
hundred thousand more coming forward ; while there 
are many protected points in the central counties 
where the fruit can be successfully grown. The 
orange of Southern California is also of the finest 
quality; it begins to ripen in December, is in its 
prime in January, and lingers in market till April. 
The profit of its culture is generous ; it requires ten 
years to bring an orange grove into bearing; but 
then a single tree will return fifty dollars a year, and 
an acre of trees three thousand dollars. The lime 
and the lemon ripen where the orange does ; the 
olive flourishes still farther north ; the ^g grows in 
all the valleys of the State, producing two crops a 
year in the south, and one in the center and north; 
the date palm, the pomegranate, the almond, and 
the walnut, all flourish and ripen their fruit in the 
southern and central counties ; the pine-apple and ba- 
nana are alone of all the leading tropical fruits limited 
and uncertain; while forty varieties of grapes are 
already grown successfully in California, that would 
not live in the Eastern States north of the Carolinas ; 
and peaches, plums, pears, apples, cherries and apri- 



MYSTERY OF CALIFORNIA'S PRODUCTIVENESS. 437 

cots, all the fruits of the temperate zone, find con- 
genial homes and perfect development in the valleys 
and on the hill-sides of the central and northern coun- 
ties. The dried fruits, cured by sharp sunshine and 
dry air, hold in rich supply the juices of their ripe- 
ness, and furnish a sauce far surpassing all ordinary 
dried fruits in acceptance to the palate and grateful- 
ness to the stomach. 

But the great security of California's agricultural 
wealth lies not alone in the richness of her soil nor in 
the wonderful variety of her productions. The cheap- 
ness with which her crops can be grown is the more 
pregnant and assuring fact. With labor from twenty- 
five to fifty per cent, dearer than in the Eastern States, 
she' yet offers food of nearly every variety as cheap if 
not cheaper than it is sold for in the East, and harvests 
a more generous profit on its production. San Fran- 
cisco sells flour to-day at half the prices of New York, 
and with a profit at every stage of its manufacture. 
California would like no better assurance of wealth 
than to raise wheat and grapes at two cents a pound 
year by year, or beef at half New England prices. Yet 
this is the country that Eastern emigrants in 1849-50 
cursed for its barrenness, while they ate flour from 
Michigan and Indiana, by way of New York and Cape 
Horn, at twenty-five and fifty cents a pound. But how 
such fruitfulness can be, when for six months of every 
year no rain falls, and no dew drops, and the dusty 
valleys and the parched hill-sides testify to the death 
of nature, is still a mystery to everybody who has not 
wintered and summered in California, and yet the 
occasion of wonder to all not born and reared on the 



438 OUR NEW WEST. 

soil. That here, where all the laws of nature, as we 
have been accustomed to learn and see them, are vio- 
lated, nature should be more bountiful than any where 
else, mocks our intelligence, and almost makes us feel 
as if Providence had insulted us. 

Let us consider some of the salient facts of the cli- 
mate and cultivation of California. There are but two 
'^seasons in the year; in the mountains, winter and sum- 
mer; in the plains and valleys, spring and summer. 
With the rains of November, spring and seed-time 
commence with the farmer. Then the grasses green, 
and the fruits and flowers prepare to bud. As soon as 
the ground gets fairly wet, by December generally, the 
farmer begins to plow and plant; and this work he can 
keep up till April. May and June perfect his crops, 
and from then till October is harvest time. He is not 
limited to thirty days for his planting, nor to another 
thirty for his harvesting. The season waits on his 
leisure, and invites him to an unlimited area of culture. 
Full half the days of his winter or spring are bright 
and pleasant, and the rest are showery rather than 
rainy; all the days of his summer are fair and dry. 
From May to November, he need not lose a day for 
himself or his laborers. He may cut his grain in June, 
and not gather it till September or October. No barns 
are needed for his harvests ; the kindly sky, the dry air 
protect them till they are sent to market. The thrash- 
ing, the winnowing, the packing for shipping are all 
done upon the ground. Nor do his animals require 
cover; they need no kindlier protection than nature 
grants; even his laborers sleep sweetly and safely up- 
on the field through the long, dry summer. 



NO MANURE — NO TURF. 439 

A single ploughing and planting secures two crops 
of grain. The waste of the first crop is abundant 
seed for the second, and this ^^ volunteer" yield is only 
twenty or twenty-five per cent, less than the original, 
and it costs nothing save the gathering. The plough- 
ing is shallow, only four to six inches deep; for the 
farmers say deeper ploughing evaporates the moisture 
of the land. But the soil is light and open when the 
crops are growing, and only gets baked and hard when 
the long dry summer has spent its hot suns upon it. 
Then it must wait for rain before the plough can move 
through it. There is no manuring yet, except from 
the burning of the straw upon the ground. Stable 
manure does not rot, but dries up, and its goodness 
evaporates, so that something else must take its place 
to keep up the fertility of the soil in California. But 
if manure thus spoils, meat does not, and the farmer 
can cut and come again from the same quarter of 
beef in midsummer for a month. Most of the har- 
vesting is done by machinery; "reapers" or "head- 
ers" sweep over the wide grain fields; more or less 
directly their gatherings are brought to a huge 
threshing-machine, run by steam or horse-power, 
which, amid terrible dust and din, separates grain 
and chaff, when the former is sacked and piled up on 
the ground to await sale and transportation to market. 
There is no turf in California; the long summer 
kills the grass at the roots; oats and barley, cut 
green and cured in May or June, answer for hay; but 
wild oats, bunch grass, and other wild and nutritious 
grasses and grains start up freshly under the rains, 
are converted into standing hay and grain by the 
27 



440 OUR NEW WEST. 

summer sun, and afford luxurious and abundant food 
for the vast herds of cattle, horses and sheep on the 
mountain ranges, and in the unsubdued valleys. Their 
only time of trial is in November, when the rains 
beat down their old feed, and have not started the 
new. Never but once did they fail to sustain them- 
selves in their open roamings. The year 1864 was 
distinguished by a winter's drouth, and of course 
this left the summer barren of their food. The re- 
sults were terrible; thousands of animals perished 
from starvation and thirst; it is estimated that half 
the native herds of the State were thus lost; and the 
business of herding has not yet recovered from this 
blast. 

The soil of the State is everywhere more or less 
volcanic. It is permeated with alkaline elements. 
The air, too, is rich in ammonia. These are the 
secrets of the great crops, and the slow deterioration 
of the soil under continued cultivation. Barley is 
the surest and cheapest crop ; it yields on the average 
forty bushels to the acre, but special cases of one him- 
dred and even of one hundred and twenty bushels to 
the acre are recorded. Oats are not much less sure or 
bountiful. The average wheat yield is twenty bushels 
to the acre ; but it is not uncommon to see sixty 
and seventy bushels produced to the acre, and well- 
proved instances of a yield of eighty-four bushels are 
reported. But, under careless culture and continued 
cropping without rest or the replenishing of the soil, 
the production is decreasing per acre, and the quality 
of the grain is degenerating. The wheat is ordinarily 
of a high grade; it bears a hard shell, a white, pure, 



nature's irrigating processes. 441 

rich kernel^ very dry, and requires more moisture in 
the manufacture into bread than our eastern wheats. 
With the proper treatment, California flour takes the 
first rank in all the markets of the world. Rye is 
almost unknown, and buckwheat is rarely cultivated 
in California ; and Indian corn is generally unremu- 
nerative ; the cool nights and want of moisture in 
the summer are very unfavorable to its perfection. 

It has taken some years to teach California culti- 
vators how independent they really are of irrigation. 
They resort to it less and less every year. By fol- 
lowing the suggestions of nature, and ploughing and 
planting amid the early rain, every crop will get such 
strength and perfection before the summer drouth, that 
it is independent of any more moisture. So it is with 
trees and vines ; they obtain such a hold in the win- 
ter or spring months, as to require no farther help 
than nature has granted to perfect their fruit. If 
fresh flowers and grass and vegetables are desired 
through the long summer, then irrigation is required. 
But this answers to eastern culture under glass. Na- 
ture is fully up to man's reasonable wants in Califor- 
nia, and will rarely or never cheat him, provided he 
only follows her teachings. Then the soil is wonder- 
fully retentive of moisture ; the roots of trees and 
vines seem to riot all the summer in depths of unseen 
moisture below; and by a curious provision, that 
seems like a miracle, when the six months of drouth 
are half over, and the trying time seems to have come, 
then, in August and September, the hidden secretions 
rise up anew to the surface, the ground and the plants 
seem to have been rained on from below, and dried 



442 OUK NEW WEST. 

up springs begin to show freshness and even dead 
channels of winter streams trickle with a new and 
unexpected life. Orchards and vineyards were at 
first thought to be only safe and profitable in the 
lower and moister valleys ; but now they are seen to 
thrive best and to produce a higher quality of fruit as 
they are planted high up among the foot-hills of the 
mountains. 

Though there has been a rapid increase m the 
amount of land cultivated in California during the 
last few years, not over two millions of acres, out of 
a total of sixty-five millions adapted to agriculture, 
are yet improved. There has been a vast amount 
of land bought up by speculators, however, within 
two years ; and the larger part of the twelve millions 
of acres of valley land in the great Sacramento Basin 
are now taken out of the first hands of the govern- 
ment. All the lands of the Coast Valleys around the 
waters of San Francisco Bay have been in even 
greater demand, and are held at high prices. Here 
are the great farms of the rich men of San Francisco. 
It is here that the chief of the wealth that the last 
three years have drawn from the soil of California has 
been garnered. Much of these lands neighboring to 
the City and the Bay are held at from one hundred to 
five hundred dollars an acre. But there is plenty of 
good land to be had in more remote but still access- 
ible parts of California for from two to ten dollars an 
acre. The speculators cannot hold on to what they 
have hastened to gobble up ; and millions of acres still 
remain to be pre-empted from the government. 

What California agriculture now needs is diverse 



THE GROWTH OF AGRICULTUPwE. 443 

fied farming. She has overdone vast vineyards and 
sea-like wheat-fields for the present. She may well 
glory in single vineyards of a million vines, and wheat- 
fields of a thousand acres, producing fifty thousand 
bushels of grain at a single harvest; but she now re- 
quires more small farms and small farmers, making 
homes of comfort and luxury upon the land, intro- 
ducing variety in its culture, and thus improving the 
gifts of both climate and soil by multiplying the 
products of the State. There is scarcely anything, 
that is food for man, which these do not offer to her ; 
and to develop and secure all, to make her own 
people independent of other markets, and to minister 
to the wants and tastes of as many other nations as 
they can reach with their surplus, — this is the rare 
opportunity and this the selfish duty of California. 
Even her wide swamp wastes, along her great rivers, 
known as the tule lands, from the coarse reed that 
covers them, have the capacity for redemption to 
cotton and rice culture. Asia is learning to eat her 
wheat, and will welcome her surplus rice ; while the 
entire Pacific Coast, north and south, cannot escape 
the economy and necessity of living upon her surplus. 
The organization and development of the agricul- 
tural wealth of California is, in fact, almost as won- 
derful a phase in her history as was her gold-mining; 
and close upon these now treads a manufacturing era, 
that promises to be as rapid in progress, as far-reach- 
ing in effects, as either of its preceding industries has 
proven. The twelve principal agricultural counties of 
the State have grown in population from seventy-nine 
thousand in 1860 to one hundred and fortv-five thou- 



444 OUR NEW WEST. 

sand in 1868, and in property valuation from thirty-four 
millions of dollars to fifty millions ; but San Francisco, 
which represents her commerce and manufactures, ex- 
hibits a development twice as great, twice as rapid. 

The " Overland Monthly Magazine " of San Fran- 
cisco, from whose pages we have supplemented our 
own observations with many facts on these questions, 
says there is now no room in California for clerks and 
merchants, but for farmers, soil, climate and markets 
are all inviting. And we conclude this chapter with 
a quotation from its pages : — 

'* Farmers who have means to buy a house and maintain themselves 
one year have a sure thing if they will enter into more varied culture 
than only wheat. The garden and orchard go far to supply the table 
the whole year in this climate, if you have water for the farmer. Every 
place has grapes. These pay, if you can make and hold your wine, 
and they have a sure future, not far off. Mulberry trees grow like 
weeds. There are five millions now growing. You can get them one 
year old. In two years these will feed silk-worms. Any quantity of 
reeled silk is salable. All your family can work at this; and two 
crops of cocoons are certain. There is no such country for silk, in 
quantity and quality. Flax, castor bean, hops, tobacco and many such 
things might be mentioned. Wood planting in this treeless country 
would pay largely, and ten years give growth that other climates and 
soils would not give in twenty years; for all winter long the growth 
keeps on with little interruption. The dairy farm pays at once and 
handsomely. We still import butter and cheese. Farm hands and 
miners would find steady work at large wages in gold. Miners get 
three dollars a day. In conclusion, California is especially recom- 
mended to persons whose health demands a genial atmosphere. Drink 
no spirits; but domestic wine in moderation. Eat sparingly of meat, 
take your coffee weak, and avoid speculative excitements. Then, if 
you bring a liver not entirely leathered and lungs not over half con- 
sumed, and choose from a variously distributed climate the locality best 
adapted to your complaint, you may live yet long in the land." 



XXIV. 

OREGON— WASHINGTON— BRITISH COLUMBIA. 

Overland to the North — The Surprises of Oregon, Washington and 
Puget's Sound— A Week's Ride in a "Mud Wagon"— Up Through 
the Sacramento Valley — Chico and General Bidwell, Red Bluffs 
and the John Browns — The Mingling Mountains and New Valleys 
— Shasta, Yreka and Jacksonville — Mount Shasta and Pilot Knob — 
The Forests in Whole and in Detail — Joe Lane and Jesse Apple- 
gate — The Willamette Valley, the Garden of Oregon — Its Beauty, 
Fertility and Settlements — The Rains of Oregon — The Web Feet 
— Portland — The New England of the Pacific — Through Washing- 
ton Territory to Puget's Sound — " Shookem Chuck " and Olympia — 
The Forests of Washington — The " Square Meal" Feature of Pacific 
Coast Civilization — The Lumber Wealth and Water and Forest 
Beauty of Puget's Sound — Victoria and Vancouver's Island — New 
Westminster and British Columbia — British Taxation and Rebel- 
lious Subjects — Decrease of Population and Wealth — A Good Time 
at Victoria — John Bull and Brother Jonathan Fraternize Over 
Food and Drink — The San Juan Dispute — The Hudson Bay Com- 
pany's Depots — The Snow Mountains and the Summer Gardens of 
Victpria — Contrasts there and with the East. 

Between our California excursions, we made an 
overland toiir through Oregon and Washington and 
into the British Provinces of the North. Its revela- 
tions of beautiful scenery, of natural wealth, of ma- 
terial development were more unexpected than those 
of California. For the latter we were in a measure 
prepared^ but the former had somehow been hidden 



446 OUPw NEW WEST. 

from us. The audacity both of California nature 
and of California life had thrust her fully before the 
public, and shaded the quality and the growth of her 
less sensational but scarcely less interesting neigh- 
bors. So we had the always delicious element of 
unexpectedness in the scenes and experiences of our 
northern tour. But there was some rebellious flesh 
among us, when we were told that to see Oregon we 
must take another week of day and night stage rid- 
ing; much of it over rough mountain roads, and in a 
"mud wagon" at that. We thought to have been 
through with that sort of travel. Yet no week's rid- 
ing gave us greater or richer variety of experience ; 
more beauty of landscape ; more revelation of knowl- 
edge; more pleasure and less pain, than this one up 
through Northern California and Middle Oregon, be- 
tween the Coast Mountains and the Sierra Nevadas. 
It is six hundred and fifty miles from Sacramento 
in mid California due north to Portland in mid Ore- 
gon. The beginnings of the Railroad that is to con- 
nect them carry us on fifty or sixty miles through 
Marysville to Oroville. These are the principal, as 
they are very pleasant and prosperous, towns in the 
Sacramento Yalley, above the capital. But they are 
even hotter and drier in summer than Sacramento or 
Stockton. For one hundred miles more, we rode 
through the broad alluvial fields of the Yalley, — some- 
times rolling in waves of earth, then flat and wide as 
flattest and widest of Illinois prairies, often treeless 
and uncultivated, though never uncultivatable ; and 
again charming with old oak groves, and fruitful 
with grain fields and orchards, that yield an increase 



"old joh:^^ browi^'s" family. 447 

unknown in all Atlantic valleys or Mississippi basin 
bottoms. Chico was one of its first and most attrac- 
tive settlements ; the central feature being the home 
of General Bidwell, a pioneer of California life, and 
now a leading citizen, with a grand estate here of 
twenty thousand fertile acres, on nine hundred of 
which he raised so long ago as in 1863 thirty-six 
thousand bushels of wheat. His garden and orchard 
occupy one hundred acres alone. When we stopped 
and took supper with him, he was a newly elected 
Congressman and a forlorn bachelor; now he is an 
ex-Congressman and a happy husband. The fates 
were certainly propitious to rescue him, unscathed, 
from such double perils. 

On through a like productive country, crossing 
streams whose banks are lined with an almost trop- 
ical growth of trees and vines, along roads bordered 
with fences and trees, past farms and orchards rich in 
grams and fruits, we made our first night ride, pass- 
ing in the gray morning the prosperous little town 
of Red Blufis, which is noteworthy as the head of 
navigation on the Sacramento River,— some three 
hundred miles from its mouth,— and so a central 
pomt of commerce for all Northern California and 
Southern Oregon, and as the present home of the 
widow and three daughters of the immortal John 
Brown. They straggled in here, weary and poor, 
from their overland journey, but found most hospit- 
able greeting from the citizens and have secured a 
permanent home. A subscription among the Cali- 
fornians gave them a nice cottage home; Mrs. Brown 
was earning both love and support as a successful 



448 OUR NEW WEST. 

nurse and doctor, particularly for children; and her 
daughters were teachers in the j)ublic schools. 

Now the Great Central Basin of California begins 
to narrow; and soon the Coast Range and Sierra 
Nevada Mountains, breaking up their lines, meet and 
mingle. For the remaining two hundred miles of 
California, and the first two hundred of Oregon, our 
road winds painfully among and over the hills, and 
up and down narrow valleys, first of tributaries of 
the Sacramento, and then of minor though earnest 
streams, — Trinity, Klamath, Rogue and Umpqua, — 
that steal their way, among the scattered and em- 
bracing ranges of the Coast and the Sierra Nevada, 
west to the Ocean. 

Shasta and Yreka are the two remaining villages 
of importance in California, with perhaps fifteen hun- 
dred inhabitants each. Born of rich placer gold 
diggings in neighboring valleys and gulches, but 
bereft of half of their former populations by the dis- 
covery of more tempting fields elsewhere, and the 
inherent migratory character of gold seekers, they 
present the sad array of unoccupied stores and houses, 
so common to the interior mining towns of California. 
Their second reactionary stage has since begun, how- 
ever ; a more careful and intelligent working of the 
gold sands and banks proves them still profitable, — 
in some cases richly so ; the Chinese are coming in 
to work over the neglected courses, satisfied with 
smaller returns than the whites ; and best of all, agri- 
culture, hitherto despised, is asserting its legitimate 
place as the base of all true and steady prosperity. 
The valleys, though small, are fruitful, and many of 



MOUNT SHASTA — JACKSONVILLE. 449 

the hill-sides are equally rich for grain and fruit. 
These hills of Northern California and Southern Ore- 
gon seem, indeed, the true home of apple, pear and 
grape, and are sure to have a large place in the 
future fruit-growing and wine-making prosperity of 
the Pacific Coast. A little ^\e years' old orchard, on 
the hill-sides near Shasta, produced in 1864 three 
thousand bushels of peaches, one thousand ^ve hun- 
dred bushels of apples, and grapes by the ton, for 
which the owner found market among the miners in 
the mountains around, and in the villages north and 
south. 

Along here, individual mountains assumed a rare 
majesty; snow peaks were visible, ten thousand and 
eleven thousand feet high; and soon, too, Mount 
Shasta, monarch of the Sierras in Northern Cali- 
fornia, reared its lofty crown of white, conspicuous 
among hills of five thousand and six thousand feet, 
alike for its vast fields of snow, its perfect shape, 
and its hight of fourteen thousand four hundred feet 
above the sea level. We saw it from various points 
and all sides, and everywhere it was truly a King of 
the Mountains, and is entitled to rank among the 
first dozen mountain peaks of the world. 

Jacksonville was the first conspicuous town in Ore- 
gon, and showed obvious first-cousinship to Yreka and 
Shasta. But its neighboring gold diggings made bet- 
ter report; many of the five hundred men engaged 
upon them in the county were very prosperous, and 
all were making good wages ; promising quartz mines 
were also discovered; and we found, everywhere al- 
most in these mountain counties of Northern Cali- 



450 OUR NEW WEST. 

fornia and Southern Oregon, gathering evidences of 
much gold jet unwashed or undug, that would still 
form the basis, with cheaper and more abundant labor 
and capital, of a large population and a new material 
growth for this region. The northern county of Cali- 
fornia (Siskiyou) counted no fewer than two thousand 
Chinese among its population, and of these, eleven 
hundred were engaged in gold digging, from whom 
as foreigners the State gathered a tax of four dollars 
a month each, or from fifty thousand to sixty thou- 
sand dollars a year. That they could stand this 
enormous tribute, and still keep at work, showed well 
enough that it paid them to wash and re-wash the 
golden sands of these valleys. 

The scenery of this region is full of various beauty. 
Of conspicuous single objects. Pilot Knob, a great 
chunk of bare rock standing on a mountain top, 
ranks next to Mount Shasta ; it must be eight hun- 
dred to one thousand feet high in itself, and, seen 
from all quarters, it has been famous as a pilot to the 
early emigrants in their journey across the moun- 
tains. The hills are rich with pine forests, and these 
grow thicker and the trees larger and of greater 
variety, as also the valleys widen and seem more 
fertile, as the road progresses into Oregon. Firs 
rival the pines and grow to similar size, one hundred 
and two hundred feet high and three to five feet in 
diameter. Farther up in Oregon, about the Colum- 
bia Kiver, the fir even dominates, and is the chief 
timber, and specimens of it are recorded that are 
twelve feet through and three hundred feet high ! 
The oak, too, has its victories in the valleys, and we 



THE TREES OF THE FORESTS. 451 

ride through groves and parks of it that are in- 
describably beautiful. That fascinating parasite 
of British classics, the mistletoe, appears also, and 
shrouds the branches of the oak with its rich, ten- 
der green, and feeds on its rugged life. Many an 
oak had succumbed to the greedy bunch boughs of 
the mistletoe, that fastened themselves upon it, and, 
despite its beauty and the sentimental reputation it 
brings to us from British poets, I came to shrink from 
its touch and sight. More graceful and inviting and 
less absorbing of life, — rather token of death, — was 
the pendent Spanish moss, hanging gray and sere 
and sad from the pine branches and trunks, along our 
way in Southern Oregon. 

The birch, the ash, the spruce, the arbor vitae, and 
the balsam, all contribute to these forests. Only the 
transcending elm of the New England valleys was 
lacking to give every variety of tree beauty. But 
for extent of forest wealth, for size and beauty of 
pines and spruces and firs, for amount and quality of 
timber, as timber, and for groves of oaks, there can 
be no competition in the East to the Sierra Nevadas 
and the Coast Mountains and their intermediate val- 
leys in California and Oregon. Their forests become 
the perpetual wonder and admiration of the traveler, 
and are destined to prove the wealth of many a gen- 
eration of settlers. 

The cross valleys of the Kogue and Umpqua Rivers 
present many rich fields for culture. The soil is a 
gravelly loam, warm and fertile, and more favorable 
for fruits, especially the grape and the peach, than 
the more northern valleys of Oregon. But the way 



452 OUR KEW WEST. 

to market is long and hard ; and the products of 
agriculture here must mainly go out to the world on 
the hoof or in wool, until the Railroad comes. So that 
the temptation to the farmer is not yet very strong. 
Still we found a few rich farms and prosperous gentle- 
men farmers. "Joe" Lane, famous in the politics of 
Oregon, had an estate near the road ; and we stopped 
and breakfasted with another and more worthy pio- 
neer of the country, Mr. Jesse Applegate. He came 
here from Missouri near thirty years ago, — for Oregon 
dates back farther than California, farmers and poli- 
ticians coming hither from Missouri, and Methodist 
missionaries from New England, full ten years before 
the gold discoveries of the Golden State, — and has 
had a constant share in the material, moral and 
political growth of the State. But a reformer and 
philosopher by nature, he has kept his thought so far 
in advance of the popular current, — abreast, indeed, 
of the Greeleys and Sumners of the East, — that he 
has failed to be placed in representative positions. 
It was both surprise and refreshment to meet in this 
almost hermit of the woods so pure and vigorous a 
thinker on our current politics ; and we learned then 
and afterwards to place Jesse Applegate foremost 
among the men of Oregon. Sending his three sons 
to fight for the country, he staid at home to carry 
on their farm of two thousand acres. But farmino; 
here, he says, is but a cheap, careless process ; labor 
is so dear, and grain grows so easily, and the market 
is so distant, that there is no incentive for real 
cultivation and care in the business. Grass grows 
naturally, abundantly; timothy seed, thrown upon 



THE WILLAJSIETTE YALLEY, OREGON. 453 

the "unbrokeii soil, gives the best of permanent mow- 
ing; and so mild are the winters, and so abundant 
the feed upon hill and plain, that even that is only 
improved as a precaution against exceptional snow. 
Though he feeds cattle by the hundreds some seasons, 
and thousands in others, he had then one hundred 
and twenty-five tons of hay that he cut two years 
before, but for which he had yet had no use. 

Two days and a night of rough riding from Jack- 
sonville over rather unmilitary roads, built for the 
government some years ago by the since famous 
General Hooker, brought us out, of a sweet. June- 
like afternoon, upon the hill that overlooks the head 
of the Willamette (Wil-lam-ette) Yalley. Here the 
mountain ranges cease their mazy dancing together, 
and take their places again east and west, feeding a 
river that runs midway north one hundred and 
twenty-five miles to the Columbia River, and water- 
ing a valley through that length and for fifty miles 
wide. This is the Willamette River and Yallej', — the 
garden of Oregon, — itself Oregon; that which led 
emigrants here years before the gold discoveries on 
the Pacific Coast; the home of nearly two-thirds of 
all the inhabitants of the State; the chief source of 
its present strength and prosperity, and its sure secu- 
rity for the future; lifting it above the uncertainties 
of mining, and giving guaranty of stability, intelli- 
gence and comfort to its people. 

We were led down into this indeed paradisiacal val- 
ley through richest groves of oak ; the same are scat- 
tered along the foot-hills on either side, or people 
the swelling hills that occasionally vary the prairie 



454 OUR NEW WEST. 

surface of its central lines; while tlie river, strong 
and free and navigable through the whole valley 
a part of the year, and through the lower half at 
all times, furnishes a deep belt of forest along the 
very middle of the valley. Never beheld I more 
fascinating theater for rural homes; never seemed 
more fitly united natural beauty and practical com- 
fort; fertility of soil and variety of surface and pro- 
duction; never were my bucolic instincts more deeply 
stirred than in this first outlook upon the Willamette 
Yalley. The soil is a strong, clayey, vegetable loam, 
on a hardpan bottom, holding manures firmly, and 
yielding large crops of the small grains, apples and 
potatoes. Wheat and apples are the two great crops 
at present; much of the improved land being set 
out with apple orchards, that come into full bearing 
in from two to three years after planting. Wool and 
beef are, also, as in the lower valleys, leading items 
in the agricultural wealth of the Willamette. The 
hills and valleys of interior Oregon furnish almost 
inexhaustible and continuous pasture grounds. The 
spring is too cold and wet for peaches; the summer 
nights are too cold for corn, though it is grown to a 
limited degree; but Isabella and Catawba grapes 
ripen perfectly; it is the home of the cherry; and 
pears, plums and all the small berries reach high per- 
fection. The average yield of wheat in the valley is 
twenty-five bushels to the acre ; but fifty is often ob- 
tained with careful cultivation. 

Though this valley supports a population of sixty 
thousand by agriculture only, probably not one-sixth 
of its area has yet felt the plough, and certainly not 



THE OEEGONIANS WEB-FOOTED. 455 

much over one-half is under fence. Its best lands can 
be bought for from ten to thirty-five dollars an acre 
depending upon improvements and nearness to vil- 
lages and river. Only specially favored farms go 
higher, as some do to fifty and even one hundred 
dollars an acre. Much of the farming is unwisely 
done ; the farms are generally too large, the original 
locations bemg mostly of six hundred and forty acres 
each; and the agricultural population are largely 
Missourians, Kentuckians and Tennesseeans, of that 
class who are forever moving farther west, and only 
stop here because there is no beyond but the Ocean 
The Eastern men proper in Oregon, of whom there are 
mdeed many, are mostly in the villages and towns, 
leaders in trade, and commerce, and manufactures, as 
well as m the professions. 

The long summer drouth, that distinguishes the 
climate and tries the agriculture of Utah, Nevada 
and California, is unknown in Oregon. There is no 
suggestion of irrigation here. Her fertile region,— 
so made fertile, indeed,— between the Coast°Moun- 
tams and the Sierras, or the Cascades, as the interior 
range of mountains is called in Oregon, is abundantly 
supplied with rain the year round. There is enouc^h 
m summer to ripen the crops, and not too much to 
mterfere with harvesting; and the winter is one 
long shower of six months. The Californians call 
their northern neighbors the Web Feet; and from all 
accounts there is something too much of rain and mud 
during the winter season ; but the fertUity and per- 
fection, which its agriculture enjoys in consequence, 
leave the practical side of the joke with the Oreo-o- 



456 OUR NEW WEST. 

niaiis. There is no snow in the valleys of Middle and 
Western Oregon ; only rain and mist deaden the dor- 
mant season; but February is usually a clear and 
warm month, and the work of the farmer then actively 
begins. The summers are long and favorable, with 
warm days but cool nights, — more endurable for 
the human system than New England summers, and 
kinder for all vegetation, with the single exception, 
perhaps, of Indian corn. The average temperature 
of the \yillamette Yalley for the six summer months 
is from sixty-five to seventy, and of the six winter 
months from forty to forty-five degrees. And grass 
grows through all the so-called winter. 

Eugene City, Corvallis, Albany, Salem, Oregon 
City and Portland are the chief centers of popula- 
tion in the Willamette Yalley, in the order in which 
we passed them, coming down to the Columbia. Sa- 
lem is the State capital, and is a beautifully located, 
thriving, inland town, with woolen mills and the 
State institutions and excellent schools for the evi- 
dences and means of its progress in civilization. 

From Salem, we took steamboat passage, fifty miles, 
to Portland, the commercial and business center of 
the State, half rival to San Francisco itself, and the 
only other town, indeed, of prominence on the Pacific 
Coast, that showed signs of steady, uninterrupted 
prosperity during the summer of our visit. At Ore- 
gon City, part way between Salem and Portland, we 
paid respect to the original capital of the Territory, 
inspected a new and extensive woolen mill that cost 
seventy-five thousand dollars in gold, and were rail- 
roaded around the falls of the Willamette, which, 



PORTLAND^ OREGON. 457 

though not a brilliant feature in the natural scene^ 
offer temptations and almost inexhaustible water- 
power for the manufactures, that the agricultural pro- 
ductions of the State invite, and the enterprise of 
its citizens is already wisely and eagerly reaching 
forward to. 

Portland, by far the largest town of Oregon, lies 
very pleasantly on the banks of the Willamette, 
twelve miles before it joins the Columbia River, and 
one hundred and twenty miles from where the Co- 
lumbia meets the Pacific Ocean. Ships and ocean 
stean^-ers of highest class come readily hither; from 
it spreads out a wide navigation by steamboat of the 
Columbia and its branches, below and above; here 
centers a large and increasing trade, not only for the 
Willamette Valley, but for the mining regions of 
Eastern Oregon and Idaho, Washington Territory on 
the north, and parts even of British Columbia beyond. 
Even Salt Lake and Montana, too, have taken gro- 
ceries and dry goods through this channel, and may 
yet find it advantageous to buy more and continu- 
ously; such are the attained and the attainable water 
communications through the far-extending Columbia. 

The population of Portland is now from eight to 
ten thousand, who keep Sunday with as much strict- 
ness almost as Puritanic New England does, which 
can be said of no other population this side the Rocky 
Mountains at least. Whether this fact has anything 
to do w^ith it or not, real estate we found to be very 
high in Portland, — four hundred dollars a front foot 
for best lots one hundred feet deep on the main 
business street, without the buildings. In religion, 



458 OUR KEW WEST. 

the Methodists have the lead^ and control an academic 
school in town and a professed State university at 
Salem; the Presbyterians are next, with a beautiful 
church and the most fashionable congregation, and 
favor a struggling university under Rev. S. H. Marsh, 
located twenty miles off in the valley ; perhaps the 
Catholics rank third, with a large Sisters of Charity 
establishment and school within the city. Iron mines 
are successfully worked in the neighborhood, and the 
city has prosperous iron foundries and machine shops, 
and is reaching forward to other manufacturing suc- 
cesses. But ao-riculture is the first interest of the 
State ; wheat and wool and apples are her principal 
exports ; her commerce is wide-reaching and am- 
bitious; her gold mines, in the eastern and southern 
parts of the State, yield about one million of dollars 
a year ; and her people and their prospects make in 
many ways a pleasant and hopeful impression upon 
the traveler. 

The Oregonians lack many of the advantages of 
their neighbors below ; their agriculture is less varied 
and rampant, but it is more sure ; mining has not 
poured such irregular and intoxicating wealth into 
their laps ; they need, as well, a more thorough farm- 
ing and a more varied industry; they need, also, as 
well, intelligent, patient labor and larger capital ; but 
they have builded what they have got more slowly 
and more wisely than the Californians ; they have 
less severe reaction from hot and unhealthy growth 
to encounter, — less to unlearn ; and they seem sure, 
not of organizing the first State on the Pacific Coast, 
indeed, but of a steadily prosperous, healthy and 



ACROSS WASHII^GTON TERRITORY. 459 

moral one,— they are in the way to be the New Eno;- 
land of the Pacific Coast. 

We unrolled our maps now and looked up towards 
the North Pole. So near the north-western limit of 
the Eepublic and not to touch it; so close to John 
Bull and not to shake his grim paw, and ask him 
what he thinks of the preposterous Yankees since 
they have re-established and re-invigorated the Ee^ 
public by war and freedom ; so near to that rarely 
beautiful sheet of water, Puget Sound, and not to sail 
through it, and know its commercial capacities and 
feel its natural attractions,— it would never do. So 
we put out of Portland, steamed down the Columbia 
for fifty miles, and up its Cowlitz branch for two 
miles (all that is now navigable), and landed on the 
Washington Territory side, at two houses and a stage 
wagon, bearing the classic name of Monticello. Mr. 
Jefferson of Virginia was not at home ; but in his 
place was the everlasting and all-subduing Massa- 
chusetts Yankee, testifying, like all the rest of these 
border settlers, away from schools and churches and 
society, that there was no such other country any- 
where, and that you could not drive them back to 
the snows and cold winters of ^^ the States.'* 

The next question was, how to put eleven passen- 
gers in an open wagon that only held seven, for a 
nmety-mile and two-day drive across the Territory. 
It was successfully achieved by putting three of them 
on saddle horses and the other extra one in some- 
body's lap ; and off we bounced into the woods at 
the rate of three or four miles an hour. Most un- 
poetical rounding to our three thousand miles of 



460 OUK NEW WEST. 



staging in these ten weeks of travel, was this ride 
through Washington. The road was rough beyond 
description ; during the winter rains it is just impass- 
able, and is abandoned ; for miles it is over trees and 
sticks laid down roughly in swamps; and for the 
i^est, — ungraded, and simply a path cut through the 
dense forest, — the hight and depth are fully equal 
to the length of it. Those who worked their pas- 
sage, by whipping lazy mules whose backs they 
strode, and paid twenty dollars for the privilege, 
made the best time, and had the easiest experience. 
Yet for days afterwards I observed that, with tender 
memories of hard saddles, they preferred to "stand 
and wait" to sitting upon wooden chairs. 

But the majestic beauty of the fir and cedar forests, 
through which we rode almost continuously for the 
day and a half that the road stretched out, was com- 
pensation for much discomfort. These were the 
finest forests of all we had traversed or beheld, — 
the trees larger and taller and standing thicker ; so 
thick and tall that the ground they occupy could not 
hold them cut and corded as wood ; and the under- 
growth of shrub and flower and vine and fern, almost 
tropical in its luxuriance and impenetrable for its 
closeness. Washington Territory must have more 
timber and ferns and blackberries and snakes to the 
square mile than any other State or Territory of the 
Union. We occasionally struck a narrow prairie or 
a tbread-like valley; perhaps once in ten miles a 
clearing of an acre or two, rugged and rough in its 
half-redemption from primitive forest; but for the 
most part it was a continuous ride through forests, 



OLYMPIA AJ^D ITS YICTUAL. 461 

SO high and thick that the sun could not reach the 
road, so unpeopled and untouched, that the very 
spirit of Solitude reigned supreme, and made us feel 
its presence as never upon Ocean or Plain. The 
ferns are delicious, little and big, — more of them, and 
larger than can be seen in any of the Eastern States, 
— and spread their beautiful shapes on every hand. 
But the settlers apply adjectives less complimentary 
to them, for they vindicate their right to the soil, in 
plain as well as forest, with most tenacious obstinacy, 
and to root them out is a long and difficult job for 
the farmer. 

We dined on the second day at Skookem Chuck 
(which is Indian for " big water,") and came at night 
to the head of Puget Sound, which kindly shortens 
the land-passage across the Territory one-half, and 
were ushered into Olympia, the capital, amid the roar 
of cannon, the din of brass band, and the waving of 
banners, by its patriotic and enthusiastic citizens. It 
lies charmingly under the hill by the water-side ; 
counts its inhabitants by the hundreds, though still 
the largest town of the Territory, save the mining cen- 
ter of Wallula, away down in the south-east towards 
Idaho ; numbers more stumps than houses within its 
city limits ; but is the social and political center for 
a large extent of country ; puts on the airs and holds 
many of the materials of fine society ; and entertained 
us at a most comfortable little inn, whose presiding 
genius, a fat and fair African of fifty years and three 
hundred pounds, robed in spotless white, welcomed 
us with the grace and dignity of a queen, and fed us 
as if we were in training for a cannibal's table. 



462 OUR NEW WEST. 

If there is one thing, indeed, more than another, 
among the facts of civilization, which the Pacific 
Coast organizes most quickly and completely, it is 
good eating. From the Occidental at San Francisco 
to the loneliest of ranches on the most wilderness of 
weekly stage routes, a "good square meal" is the 
rule ; while every village of five hundred inhabitants 
has its restaurants and French or Italian cooks. I 
say this with the near experience and the lively 
recollection of one or two most illustrious exceptions, 
where the meals consisted of coarse bacon, ancient 
beans and villainous mustard, and where, o' nights, 
the beds could e'en rise and walk with fleas and bed- 
bugs. When the Puritans settled New England, their 
first public duty was to build a church with thrifty 
thought for their souls. Out here, their degenerate 
sons begin with organizing a restaurant, and supply- 
ing Hostetter's stomachic bitters and an European or 
Asiatic cook. So the seat of empire, in its travel 
westward, changes its base from soul to stomach, 
from brains to bowels. Perhaps it is only in obedi- 
ence to that delicate law of our later civilization, 
which forbids us to enjoy our religion unless we have 
already enjoyed our victual, and which sends a dys- 
peptic to hell by an eternal regard to the fitness of 
things. And, certainly, the piety that ascends from 
a grateful and gratified stomach is as likely to be 
worthy as that fitfully fructified by Brandreth's pills. 

Is it not a little singular that only our forty-oddth 
State should bear the name of Washington ? That 
it was left to this day and to this far away corner 
Territory to enroll his name among the stars of the 



WASHINGTON TERRITORY — PUGET SOUND. 463 

Republic's banner? Washington Territory is the 
■upper half of old Oregon^ divided by the Columbia 
Eiver and the fortieth parallel for the southern 
boundary, and extending up to the forty-ninth, to 
which, under the reaction from the unmartial Polk's 
"fifty-four-forty or fight" pretensions, our northern 
line was ignominiously limited to. Its population is 
small, not more than twenty thousand, and not likely 
to grow fast, or make it a State for some years to 
come, unless the chance, not probable, of rich gold 
and silver mines within its lines should flood it with 
rapid immigration. But it holds sure wealth and a 
large future through its certain illimitable forests and 
its probable immense coal deposits. Of all its surface, 
west of the Cascade or Sierra Nevada Mountains, not 
more than one-eighth is prairie or open land ; the 
rest is covered by a growth of timber, such as, both 
in density and in size, no other like space on the 
earth's surface can boast of Beyond the mountains, 
to the east, the country partakes of the same charac- 
teristics as that below it; hilly, barren of trees, un- 
fruitful, whose chief promises and possibilities are in 
the cattle and sheep line. Its arable land this side 
the mountains, where the forests are cleared or inter- 
rupted, is less fertile than that of Oregon and Cali- 
fornia; but it sufficeth for its present population, and 
even admits of considerable exports of grain and 
meat for the mining populations in British Columbia, 
and will grow in extent and productiveness probably 
as fast as the necessities of the Territory require. 

We were a full day and night in passing down 
through Puget Sound to British Columbia, on the 



464 OUR NEW WEST. 

steamer from Oljmpia ; loitering along at the villages 
on its either shore, and studying the already considera- 
ble development of its lumber interests, as well as re- 
galing ourselves with the beauty of its waters and its 
richly-stored forest shores. Only the upper section 
of the southern branch of these grand series of inland 
seas and rivers, that sweep into the Continent here, 
and make Vancouver's Island, and open up a vast 
region of interior country to the Ocean, is now called 
Puget Sound, — only forty miles or so from Olympia 
north. Formerly the whole confines went by that 
name ; and rightfully it should remain to all which 
runs up into Washington Territory from out the 
Strait of San Juan de Fuca, for this has a unity and 
serves a similar purpose. For beauty and for use, 
this is, indeed, one of the water wonders of the 
world ; curiosity and commerce will give it, year by 
year, increase of fame and visitors. It narrows to a 
river's width ; it circles and swoops into the land 
with coquettish freedom ; and then it widens into 
miles of breadth ; carrying the largest of ships any- 
where on its surface, even close to the forests' edge ; 
free of rocks, safe from wind and wave ; the home of 
all craft, clear, blue and fathomless. 

It is the great lumber market of all the Pacific 
Coast. Already over a dozen saw-mills are located 
on its shores ; one which we visited was three hun- 
dred and thirty-six feet long, and turns out one 
hundred thousand feet of lumber daily; three ships 
and two barks of ^ve hundred to one thousand tons 
each were loading with the product direct from the 
mill; and the present entire export of the Sound, 



THE BIG TEEES OF WASHINGTON. 465 

in prepared lumber and masts and spars, reaches 
nearly to one hundred millions of feet yearly, and 
yields at the average price of ten dollars a thousand 
about one million of dollars. San Francisco is the 
largest customer; but the Sandwich Islands, China, 
all the Pacific American ports, south and north, and 
even Buenos Ayres around on the Atlantic, come 
hither for building materials, and France finds here 
her cheapest and best spars and masts. Much of the 
shipping employed in the business is owned on the 
Sound ; one mill company has twelve vessels of from 
three hundred to one thousand tons each. The busi- 
ness is but in its very infancy ; it will grow with the 
growth of the whole Pacific Coast, and with the in- 
creasing dearth of fine ship timber in other parts of 
the world ; for it is impossible to calculate the time 
when, cut and saw as we may, all these forests shall 
be used up, and the supply become exhausted. 

The size of these Washington Territory trees was 
rather overpowering, — for we had not then seen the 
Big Trees of California, — and not daring to trust un- 
accustomed eyes, we resorted to the statistics of the 
lumbermen. Trees, six and seven feet in diameter, 
and two hundred to two hundred and fifty feet high, 
are very common, perhaps rarely out of sight in the 
forest; eight feet in diameter and three hundred feet 
high are rarer, but still not at all uncommon; — the 
builder of the telegraph line had hitched his wire in 
one case to a cedar (arbor vitee) which is fourteen 
feet in diameter; a monster tree that had fallen, — 
the forests are full of fallen trees, — measured three 
hundred and twenty -five feet long; and another tree, 



466 OUR NEW WEST. 

at the distance of ninety feet from its root^ was seven 
feet in diameter! Masts for ships are readily procur- 
able, straight as an arrow, and without a knot for one 
hundred feet, and forty inches in diameter at thirty 
feet from the base. 

Out of the Sound and straight across the Strait, 
twenty miles, we encounter the rocky shore of Van- 
couver's Island; searching along we meet a hidden 
hole in the wall, and, steaming in, there opens out a 
little wash-bowl of a bay; and here is Victoria. It 
was a charming surprise, — the prettiest located and 
best built town on the Pacific Coast, and next to Port- 
land in size and business, — a healthy copartnership of 
American enterprise and enthusiasm, and English so- 
lidity and holdfastness. The population ranged from 
twenty-five hundred in summer and dull times to five 
thousand in winter and the flush season, when the 
mining across on the main land of British Columbia 
had paid well, and the miners came to town to spend 
their harvest. Out of the town and its trade, tbe 
Island offers little development; there are some poor- 
paying gold-mines; good bituminous coal is found in 
abundance, and profitably worked; here and there is 
farming in patches, which is extending, but most of 
the food eaten on the Island comes from California 
and Washington. The whole population of Van- 
couver's Island did not exceed five thousand, at least 
half of whom were Americans. Across the Gulf, in 
the province of British Columbia proper, were per- 
haps an aggregate of seven thousand people more, 
but scattered from its capital of New Westminster, at 
the mouth of Frazer River, north and east for six 



THE TAXATION OF THE ENGLISH COLONIES. 467 

hundred miles to the gold diggings of the Upper 
Frazer, the Carriboo country, and the Kootenay, a 
branch of the Columbia River. 

There was little or no wealth in either province 
but such as came from the fickle and now fading 
gold-mines and the also lessening fur-gatherings of 
the Hudson Bay Company. The majority of the 
miners were emigrants from California and Oregon, 
and were animated by no loyalty to the British au- 
thorities. Yet both at Victoria and New Westminster 
there were set up the cumbersome and expensive 
machinery of English colonial governments. The 
governors were almost more numerous than the 
governed ; and the latter made bitter complaint of 
the severe taxes that were levied upon them for the 
benefit of the former. The year we were there, 
nearly half a million dollars had been squeezed out 
of the people of little Victoria alone by a system of 
taxation, much more burdensome than our civil war 
had thrown upon the American people, and including 
a tax on all sales, special licenses for every kind of 
business, and an income tax at the end. The taxa- 
tion in one province averaged one hundred dollars a 
year to each resident, and in the other to seventy 
dollars. Since 1865, the two provinces have been 
consolidated, and one set of government machinery 
saved ; but the governor of these ten or twelve 
thousand people, — for there are no more than that 
in all British Columbia, — still has a salary equal to 
that of the President of the United States, and his 
subordinates are paid in proportion ; while baronial 
castles have been built for their homes at the ex- 



468 OUR KEW WEST, 

pense of the people. Good roads to the mines, built 
hy the government, and importations free of duty 
are the only compensations offered in return. But 
all the mines of British Columbia, which began to be 
discovered in 1858, and produced three millions of 
dollars of gold in 1863, and have yielded in all about 
twenty millions, are now reduced to one million of 
dollars a year. Agriculture has little to offer as a 
source of permanent prosperity, in competition with 
that of California and Oregon. So the province is 
not growing or likely to grow in wealth and popula- 
tion, and the aristocratic and expensive foreign gov- 
ernment over them is becoming more and more ab- 
surd and distasteful to the people. Probably a ma- 
jority of them are ripe for annexation to the United 
States; and if this would not give them, as many 
blindly believe it would, a new prosperity, it certainly 
would relieve them of full half their present burden- 
some taxation. And now that we have bought the 
country north of theirs, these lightly-held, half-rebel- 
lious colonists of Great Britain hardly need an invita- 
tion to desert to the American flag. 

But our day and a half in Victoria made a very 
charming experience. The American residents gave 
Mr. Colfax and his friends cordial welcome; the 
English were no whit less hearty in demonstration 
of good feeling and respect; there was what the 
French call a "grand dinner,'' the eating whereof 
lasted from seven to ten p. M., and the speaking 
whereat continued from ten to three A. M., — the result 
of which was that all little international differences 
and accounts were amicably adjusted, Andy Johnson 



SAN JUAN — THE HUDSON BAT CO'S STORES. 469 

and Queen Victoria were married, and the two grand 
nations of the Anglo-Saxon race were joined into one 
overpowering, all-subduing, all-fructifying Republic! 
"And what a bloody country that would be," ex- 
claimed an enthusiastic Britisher at one of the clock 
in the morning. 

How could the little question of the title to a 
group of small islands in this inland sea, and known 
by the name of the largest, San Juan, be thought of in 
such a fraternal baptism ? And, indeed, by the cool of 
the morning after, it seemed a very small affair. The 
question turns on the point whether the boundary 
line runs from strait to gulf by one channel or the 
other, this side the islands or that. Meantime, each 
government supports a captain and corporal's guard 
of soldiers on San Juan; all Irish emigrants, prob- 
ably, only distinguishable one from the other by 
the blue and the red of their uniforms, and frater- 
nizing daily, doubtless, over a game of cards and a 
whisky bottle. Palpably, by the map, and by the 
course of ocean travel, the American claim to these 
islands is the right one ; but in view of the certainty 
of all this apple falling into our lap as soon as it is 
ripe enough to be really valuable, the present status 
may as well as not go indefinitely on. 

Victoria has an importance, also, as the great depot 
of the Hudson Bay Company ; all their business from 
the Pacific Coast to the Red River of the North, 
beyond Minnesota, centers here ; and their ware- 
houses of accumulating furs and of distributing goods 
to pay for them are among the chief curiosities of 
the place. They do a general trading business wher- 



470 OUR NEW WEST. 

ever they have stations or stores ; and you can buy 
calicoes and cottons, hardware and rum at their 
counters, as at any old-fashioned country store of the 
last generation in New England. 

Up here, above the latitude of Quebec and Mon- 
treal, we basked in the smile of roses that are even 
denied to us in New England. Mounts Shasta and 
Hood of California and Oregon are more than rivaled 
in deep snow fields and majestic snow peaks by 
Mounts Kainier and Baker of Washington ; sailing 
down Puget Sound, we take in the former from base 
to three peaked summit of thirteen thousand feet in 
hight, all aglow with perpetual white, — a feature of 
deep beauty and impressiveness ; along the sea coast, 
on the opposite side, the hills also rise to the region 
of continuous snow, and look down bald and white 
through the long summer days into the tropical 
flower gardens and orchards and hot streets of Vic- 
toria ; and here, within this circle of the softening sea, 
everywhere under these wintry shadows, reigns a year 
that knows no zero cold, and rarely freezing water 
or snow ; that winters fuchsias and the most delicate 
roses, English ivies and other tender plants, and sum- 
mers them with rioting luxuriance ; that grows the 
apple, the pear, and all the small fruits to perfection, 
and only cannot grow our Indian corn. 

The climate of all this Pacific Coast certainly pre- 
sents many solaces and satisfactions in comparison 
with that of our own New England. I do not wonder 
its emigrants here find new health and life and much 
happiness in the greater comparative evenness; but I 
do not yet recognize that which would compensate 



THE CLIMATES OF EAST AKD WEST. 471 

me for the loss of our slow, hesitating, coying spring 
times, our luxuriously-advancing, tender, red and 
brown autumns, aye, and our clear and crisply-cold 
winter days and snow-covered lands, with the con- 
trasting evergreens, the illuminated sky, the deli- 
cately fretted architecture of the leafless trees, the 
sunsets, the nerve-giving tonic of the air. Surely 
there is more various beauty in the progress of a 
New England year than any which all the Pacific 
Coast can offer. 



29 



XXV. 

THE COLUMBIA EIVER— IDAHO— MONTANA. 

The Extent and Importance of the Columbia River — The Scenery of its 
Conflict with the Mountains — Fort Vancouver and General Grant 
— The Cascades and The Dalles — The Railroad Portages — No River 
Scenery so Grand as that of the Columbia — Mount Hood: — The 
Rivalry of the High Mountains — The Extent of the Navigation of 
the Columbia, East, North and South — Railroad Connections with 
Salt Lake and the Rest of Mankind — The Stage Ride over the Blue 
Mountains, Through Idaho, to Salt Lake — The Scenery and the 
Mines on the Route — The Shoshone Falls, the Rival of Niagara — 
The Stage Lines Through Idaho and Montana — A* Trip Through 
Montana — Its Mountains and its Mines — The Northern Pacific Rail- 
road — Montana's Present Development and Future Prospects — The 
Boat Ride Down the Missouri River Home. 

"Whek an enthusiastic Oregonian told me the Co' 
lumbia Kiver was the largest of the Continent, and 
watered a wider section of country than any other, I 
thought of the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi, and 
smiled with mild incredulity. But unroll your map, 
and trace its course into the heart of the North-west- 
ern interior, through the Cascade Mountains, back 
into the great basin between them and the Rocky 
Mountains, and then, by its main branches, stretch- 
ing up north and winding out through all British 
Columbia, and south and east into Idaho, and over 



SCENERY OF THE COLUMBIA RIVER. 




Mount Hood. 




Scene on the Columbia River. 




Castle Rock. 



THE COLUMBIA EIYEK. 475 

into the bowels of the Kocky Mountains^ toueh- 
ing with its fingers all the vast area north of the 
Great Desert Basin and west of the Rocky Moun- 
tains; then sail with me up and down its mile and a 
half wide sweep of majestic volume, at the distance 
of one hundred and fifty miles above its mouth; see 
what steamboats already navigate its waters, and the 
points to which they reach ; and listen to the wide 
plans of the navigators for the use of its most dis- 
tant upper waters, in British Columbia and Idaho, — 
sapping the very vitals of British dominion in the 
North-west, and practically tapping the Pacific Eail- 
road as it comes west at Salt Lake for the benefit of 
Portland and Oregon, — do all this, and we will make 
our bow together to the Oregonians and their great 
river. 

Only more full surveys can determine the literal 
correctness of their claims to the superiority of their 
great river to all others in the Continent ; the Colum- 
bia, with its chief division, the Snake, may be any- 
where from twelve hundred to two thousand miles in 
length; — but that it ranks among the three or four 
great rivers of the world, and that it is the key to 
vast political and commercial questions and inter- 
ests, — giving to its line the elements of a powerful 
rivalry to the great central commercial route of our 
Continent, of which San Francisco is the Pacific 
terminus, — no one who examines its position and ex- 
tent, and witnesses the various capacity of the terri- 
tory it waters, can for a moment doubt. 

As yet, however, the Columbia is most known 
abroad for the rare beauty and majesty of the seen- 



476 OUR NEW WEST. 

ery developed by its passage througli the great An- 
dean range of North-western America. Alone of all 
the rivers of the West has it broken these stern bar- 
riers, and the theater of the conquering conflict offers, 
as might naturally be supposed, many an unusual 
feature of nature. River and rock have striven to- 
gether, wrestling in close and doubtful embrace, — 
sometimes one gaining ascendancy, again the other, 
but finally the subtler and more seductive element 
worrying its rival out, and gaining the western sun- 
shine, broken and scarred and foaming with hot 
sweat, but proudly victorious, and forcing the with- 
drawing arms of its opponent to hold up eternal 
monuments of its triumph. 

In order to witness these scenes, before leaving 
Oregon, our party made an excursion up the Colum- 
bia, through and beyond the mountain range. As 
comfortable and capacious steamboats cut its waters 
as those of the Hudson ; and it was like sailing on an 
inland sea to pass up and down its broad and majestic 
track upon them. Out of the Willamette, we soon 
felt the grand movement of the mountain conqueror. 
Near at hand on the river shore was Vancouver, a fa- 
mous spot in this valley, first as a leading station of 
the Hudson Bay Company for many years, and since 
and now as the chief military post of the United 
States in the interior North-west. Here many of 
our prominent military men have served apprentice- 
ship, — Grant, Hooker, McClellan and Ingles among 
them. They are all well remembered in the days of 
their captaincies in Oregon by the old inhabitants. 
Grant was the same quiet, close-mouthed man then 



THE CASCADES AND THE DALLES. 477 

as now^ but gave no indication of that great mas- 
tery of himself and of others, that he has within these 
few years so nobly, and to such high purpose, demon- 
strated. It was while here that he left the army 
originally, to come back to it in the hour of the 
Nation's need, a new and nobler man. 

Fifty miles of steaming up through heavily wooded 
banks brought us to the foot-hills of the Cascade 
Mountains, and soon we were upon the charmed 
ground. High walls of basaltic rock rose slowly on 
either side ; huge boulders, thrown off in the convul- 
sion of water with mountain, lay lower down the val- 
ley, or stood out in the stream, — one so large, rising 
in a rough egg-shape some thousand feet up into the 
air, as to become a conspicuous and memorable ele- 
ment in the landscape. The river gets too fast here, 
at the Cascades, as they are called, for farther prog- 
ress by boat; we change to a railway of five miles, 
under rock and along river, at the end of which we 
come to navigable waters again, and find, to our sur- 
prise, another large and equally luxurious steamer. 
During these five miles of the Cascades, the river 
makes a descent of forty feet, half of it in one mile, 
but it takes the form of rough and rocky rapids, and 
not of one distinct, measurable fall. The second boat 
took us from the Upper Cascades to the Dalles, forty- 
five miles, all the way through the mountains. The 
waters narrow and run swift and harsh ; the rocks 
grow higher and sharper; and their architecture, by 
fire and water, assumes noble and massive forms. 
The dark, basaltic stones lie along in even layers, 
seamed as in the walls of human structure ; then they 



478 OUR NEW WEST. 

change to upright form, and run up in well-rounded 
columns, one after another, one above another. Often 
there is rich similitude to ruined castles of the Ehine ; 
more frequently, fashions and forms, too massive, too 
majestic, too unique for human ambition and art to 
aspire to. Where the clear rock retires, and sloping 
sides invite, verdure springs strong, and forests, as 
thick and high as in the valleys, fill the landscape. 

At The Dalles lies the second town in Oregon, 
bearing the name of The Dalles, and holding a pop- 
ulation in 1865 of twenty-five hundred. It is the 
entrepot for the scattered mines in Eastern Oregon, 
for we are now on the eastern slopes of the moun- 
tains, and very much also for the Boise and Owyhee 
mines in Idaho. The miners come in here to winter, 
send their earnings in here, and buy here many of 
their supplies. Two millions of dollars in gold dust 
were brought in from Eastern Oregon and Idaho 
during the single month of June, 1865. 

At this point, too, there is another interruption to 
the navigation of the river, and another railway port- 
age of fifteen miles is in use. The entire water of the 
Columbia is compressed for a short distance into a 
space only one hundred and sixty feet wide, lined, bot- 
tom and sides, with stone, from which came the French 
name of The Dalles to this whole section of the river. 
Through this it pours with a rapidity and a depth, that 
give majestic, fearful intensity to its motion; while 
interfering rocks occasionally throw the stream into 
rich masses of foam. Through these second rapids of 
fifteen miles, the rock scenery at first rises still higher 
and sharper, and then fast grows tame; the moun- 



THE PRE-EMINENCE OF THE COLUMBIA. 479 

tains begin to slink away and to lose their trees; the 
familiar barrenness of the Great Interior Basin reap- 
pears ; and the only beauty of the hills is their richly 
rounded forms, often repeated, and their only utility 
pasturage for sheep and horses and cattle. The 
fifteen miles of railway, which, with the lower port- 
age of five miles, are built as permanently, and served 
as thoroughly, with the best of locomotives and cars, 
as any railroads in the country, landed us on still 
another large and luxurious steamboat, — "and still 
the wonder grew," — built far up here beyond the 
mountains, but with every appointment of comfort 
and luxury that are found in the best of eastern 
river craft, — large state-rooms, long and wide cabins, 
various and well-served meals. 

Our last steamboat carried us beyond the moun- 
tain range, — out into the dry, treeless, half-desert 
country of Eastern Oregon, — where, the scenery 
becoming common and tame, we turned back, after 
having gone as far as two hundred and sixty miles 
above the mouth of the grand River. Retracing its 
passage through the mountains and forests to Port- 
land, we worshiped anew, and fixed our first impres- 
sions that here was the grandest river scenery in the 
world. It has much of the distinguishing elements 
of the Hudson in its palisades, of the Rhine in its 
embattled, precipitous and irregularly shaped sides, 
and of the Upper Mississippi in its overhanging clifis. 
Each of these holds a beauty that is not here ; but 
the Columbia aggregates more than any one the 
elements of impressiveness, of picturesque majesty, 
of wonder-working, powerful nature. There is, how- 



480 CUE NEW WEST. 

ever, a general uniformity in its characteristics ; one 
five miles, repeats another ; and once seen, you are 
indiiFerent as to a second sight, — before next year, or 
unless with the accompaniment of new and beloved 
eyes. 

A distinguishing feature in the landscape of this 
ride up the Columbia, — apart from it, yet bounding 
it, shadowing it, yet enkindling it with highest maj- 
esty and beauty, — is Mount Hood. This is the great 
snow peak of Oregon, its Shasta, its Kainier, its 
Mount Blanc. Lying oJ0f twenty or thirty miles 
south of the river, in its passage through the moun- 
tains, it towers high above all its fellows, and is seen, 
now through their gorges, and again at the end of 
apparent long plains, leading up to it from the river. 
Most magnificent views of it are obtained through 
nearly all the boat ride up and down from Portland. 
That which Bierstadt has chosen for its perpetuation 
on canvas, and which is thus familiar to eastern eyes, 
is the most complete and impressive, end is recog- 
nized upon the steamboat. In it, the mountain 
seems to rise, apart, out from an upward-going plain, 
snow-covered from base to summit, oppressive in its 
majesty, beautiful in form, angelic in its whiteness, — 
the union of all that is great and pure and impress- 
ivCc The Oregonians, in their pride, claim for it a 
greater hight than that of any other of the represen- 
tative peaks of the North-west ; but the fact is that 
it does not exceed thirteen thousand feet, is certainly 
below Shasta in Northern California, and probably be- 
low the high peaks of Washington Territory, Rainier 
and Adams. 



THE SNOW PEAKS OF THE NORTH-WEST. 481 

The contest for the highest mountain peaks in the 
United States, though narrowing down rapidly, is 
still an unsettled one. Shasta is the highest of those 
of the North-west, being fourteen thousand four hun- 
dred and forty feet; but Colorado has three or four 
peaks that press closely upon similar figures. No 
one of them is yet known to be fourteen thousand 
^Ye hundred feet high ; but Long's, Pike's and Gray's 
Peaks and Mount Lincoln are all over fourteen thou- 
sand feet, and it is not certain that one or more of 
them will not prove, on an accurate measurement, 
to rise as high as Shasta. The palm is so far won, 
however, by Mount Whitney in Southern California, 
which was visited in 1864 by a delegation of the 
California Geological Survey, and found to reach to 
fifteen thousand feet. The only possible disputant 
for this hight, now in the field, is Sopris Peak, in 
Western Colorado, which has never been measured, 
but looks as if it might mount still higher than Whit- 
ney. Our new Arctic Territory of Alaska has threats 
ened to bear off the prize with Mount St. Elias ; but 
the greatest hight authentically claimed for that grand 
old volcano is inside of fifteen thousand feet (14,970), 
and, in fact, it has never been accurately measured. 
Besides, Alaska is hardly naturalized territory yet. 

But wherever the highest may lie, there are none 
so beautiful as these grand snow-covered mountains 
of the North-west. And of all these, that we saw in 
our journeyings, none appeared to so fine advantage 
as Mount Hood from the Columbia Kiver, — it is hard, 
indeed, to imagine a more magnificent snow moun- 
tain; and adding this crowning element to the seen- 



482 OUR NEW WEST. 

erj of the Columbia River, it is probably just to say 
of it, that this excursion offers more of natural beauty 
and wonder to interest and excite the traveler, than 
any other single journey or scene which the Pacific 
Coast presents, except the Yo Semite Valley. That 
must, of course, stand first, unrivaled and unapproach- 
able. But to this I give the second place. 

The part, which the navigation of the Columbia 
River is to play in facilitating railroad connections 
with the North-west and settling the lines and 
points of continental commerce, is an important one. 
With the help of the two short railroad portages 
already described, steamboats run up the river con- 
tinuously to the junction of the Snake or southern 
branch with the northern fork, a distance of four 
hundred miles from the mouth of the Columbia. This 
is the present starting-point for land travel and 
freight to Idaho and South-eastern Oregon. The 
business of these boats amounted in 1864 to twenty- 
two thousand tons of merchandise and thirty-six thou- 
sand passengers. The navigation company owned 
eighteen or twenty steamboats, the railroad portages, 
extensive warehouses, altogether a property of two 
millions of dollars, all, and more too, made out of the 
profits of the business. By a wagon road of one 
hundred and fifty miles north from the junction of 
the forks of the Columbia, we can reach a portion of 
the northern branch, which is navigable for steam- 
boats for two hundred miles farther north into the 
very center of British Columbia and the Hudson Bay 
Company's territory; and already a boat has been 
built and set in motion on these far away upper 



THE BRANCH RAILROAD TO OREGON. 483 . 

waters. It reaches into some of the richest of the 
fur and gold regions of British Columbia, its w histle 
and its wheels arousing the wilderness as far north 
as the fifty-second and fifty-third parallels. 

Turning to the Snake River fork, for half the year 
it is navigable for one hundred miles beyond the 
junction, or to Lewiston, where the boundaries of 
Oregon and Washington and Idaho meet together. 
But starting from the junction of the forks at or near 
Wallula, a wagon road of one hundred and ten miles 
through the Blue Mountains, and across a wide circle 
of unnavigable waters, strikes the Snake at the Powder 
River, whence it is navigable for steamboats through 
the heart of Idaho for one hundred and fifty or two 
hundred miles on the direct route towards Salt Lake, 
and to within one hundred or one hundred and fifty 
miles of thQ present Pacific Railroad at that point. 
Thus about three hundred miles of railroad over 
these two parts of the route from Salt Lake to the 
main Columbia River, would secure steamboats and 
cars all the way to Portland, Oregon ; or, skipping 
the navigable part of the Snake River, and making a 
railroad track all the way to the Columbia at Wallula, 
only five hundred miles would have to be built to 
secure quick, certain and constant steam communica- 
tion with the Pacific Coast through Oregon, while 
Idaho would be opened by the same means directly 
to the railroad connections of the Continent and to 
the Pacific Ocean. 

The construction of this branch or extension of 
the present Pacific Road is the ambition of the Ore- 
gon people, and the purpose of the Union Pacific 



484 OUR NEW WEST. 

Kailroad Company. It would give the latter a direct 
connection of their own with the Pacific Ocean, and 
render them in a certain sense independent of the 
California company. Then a railroad through the 
woods of Washington Territory, for but ninety miles 
north from the Columbia Kiver to Puget's Sound at 
Olympia, would bring the far North-west into the 
circle of steam travel and traffic, and go far to antici- 
pate the service allotted to the Northern Pacific 
Eailroad. Montana would alone, under this arrange- 
ment, be unprovided for; but the Union Pacific Com- 
pany have also in contemplation a branch road into 
that Territory from their line either at the Green 
River crossing or from the Salt Lake Valley. But 
this is a more doubtful and less inviting enterprise 
than the Idaho, Oregon and Puget's Sound line. 

On the other hand, the company owning the Cali- 
fornia end of the Pacific Road propose to reach and 
accommodate Oregon by a branch starting out from 
their track in the lower part of the Humboldt Valley, 
and running north-west through tbe lake region of 
Southern Oregon and over the Cascade Mountains to 
the head of the Willamette Valley, up which the Ore- 
gon people are already rapidly constructing a rail- 
road line. From a similar starting-point in the Hum- 
boldt Valley, the California Pacific Railroad Company 
propose to annex Idaho to their end of the route 
by a branch running north-east. Thus, without wait- 
ing for the through northern continental line, whose 
completion, whatever its claims and necessities, must 
apparently be postponed for some years, perhaps to 
another generation, the whole North-west of Idaho, 



OYER THE BLUE MOUNTAINS. 485 

Oregon, Washington and British Columbia are cer- 
tain to be speedily joined to the rest of the Nation 
in the blessed bands of iron, and made near to us 
by the swift coursers of steam. 

But I invite the traveler into our New "West not 
to postpone seeing Oregon, Idaho, or even Montana 
until even the earliest of these advantageous routes 
are open. Instead of returning down the Columbia, 
as our party did in 1865, let him go on and take the 
dehghtful stage ride from the end of navigation at 
Wallula through Idaho, back to the present railroad 
line at Salt Lake. The Blue Mountains of Eastern 
Oregon are to be crossed before we enter Idaho ; but 
the ascent and descent are easy, the roads hard and 
smooth, and not only the mountains themselves, but 
the Grand Eonde Yalley, beneath and among them, 
offer most agreeable and picturesque scenery, with 
different features from those we have witnessed before. 
Sometimes we pass high up along the very edge of a 
deep ravine, where a capsize on the wrong side would 
precipitate us hundreds of feet into the rocky gorge 
below; again, we are upon a lofty mountain top, 
where the scenery, as far as vision can reach, is as 
wild and beautiful as eye ever rested upon ; then we 
are in the bottom of a deep gorge, where mountains 
above us, covered with immense forests, tower almost 
Qut of sight; and now we find ourselves in a natural 
park, stretching miles away, studded with bright yel- 
low pines and carpeted with luxuriant grass. Thus 
the panorama is ever changing, ever inspiringly grand 
and enchanting. The first day's ride leaves us at an 
already improved watering-place. Several springs of 



486 OUR KEW WEST. 

warm sulphur water offer most welcome and health- 
ful baths ; and we go on under a new inspiration. 

The Blue are often pronounced " the best moun- 
tains in America;" the most gradual of ascent, with 
the finest soil, grass and timber. Upon their highest 
summits, where the timber is not too thick to permit 
their growth, the best qualities and greatest quantities 
of natural grasses are found. The Grand Ronde Val- 
ley is a beautiful, level tract of country, from forty to 
fifty miles in length and twenty or thirty in width, 
surrounded on every side with mountains. It is a 
pleasant spot to look upon, but much too elevated for 
general agricultural value. For years the emigrant 
to Oregon has passed through this valley on his weary 
way to the Willamette. Occasionally a late party 
would winter here, on account of the abundant grass, 
and resume their journey in the spring. But all 
were deterred from settling by the long winters and 
late and early frosts. 

The ride now grows less interesting; the valleys 
are more barren, the plains and hills treeless and vol- 
canic ; but we cross the Snake Eiver and enter upon 
the gold and silver mining regions of Idaho, in the 
gulches of its eastern branches. The precious metals 
were discovered here in 1862; and at one time there 
was a population of about thirty thousand in the 
Territory; but it is not now over half that number. 
Probably thirty millions of dollars' worth of gold and 
silver have been taken from its placer diggings and 
quartz mines ; the largest yield of eight millions being 
in 1866; but the production of 1868 was probably 
not more than five millions of dollars, perhaps not 



IDAHO — THE SHOSHONE FALLS. 487 

over four millions, and the latter is as large a yield 
as can now be calculated upon, without new discover- ^ 
ies. The Boise Basin and South Boise, north and 
east of the Snake River, and Owyhee, south and west 
of it, are the three principal mineral districts. There 
are thirty-five stamp-mills with three hundred and 
fifty stamps for the reduction of quartz ores in the Ter- 
ritory; and several of the rock mines have proved 
very remunerative. But the majority of those 
opened or offered for sale, — many being put upon 
the market that were never opened even, — have, as 
elsewhere, proved absolutely worthless, or not rich 
enough to pay for working till prices recede and 
machinery is cheaper and more searching. 

There is nothing in Idaho to attract the traveler 
or the emigrant but the mines; and these have no 
greater interest, on the whole, than those of several 
other States and Territories. The name of the Ter- 
ritory has a prettily poetic meaning, — " the gem of 
the mountains;" — but only a comparatively small 
portion of its vast surface is susceptible of tillage, and 
mining must ever continue its principal interest. In 
the moimtains a great depth of snow falls in the 
winter; but the climate is milder than in like lati- 
tudes and altitudes on the Atlantic side. 

But in the southern part of the territory, along 
the Snake River, and within from one hundred to 
one hundred and thirty miles of the north end of 
Salt Lake, are to be found several peculiar and grand 
freaks of nature, which the traveler should leave the 
stage for a day or two, to observe. The first, coming 
east, is the canyon of the Malade River, a branch of 



488 OUR NEW WEST. 

the Snake on the north ; for miles it flows through a 
narrow gorge of solid lava rock, in some places fifty 
feet deep, and yet only eight or ten feet across, the 
confined waters coursing rapidly and angrily along 
below. Next at Snake River Ferry, the waters of its 
Lost River branch, having sunk beneath the ground 
a long distance back, emerge to light again just at 
the point of junction, and pour over rocks one hun- 
dred and fifty feet high into the main stream. Ten or 
fifteen miles from this point, though only seven miles 
from the stage road at another place, are the Shoshone 
Falls in the Snake River itself. They rank next to 
Niagara in the list of the world's water-falls, and by 
some visitors are held to be entitled to the first place 
in majesty of movement and grandeur of surrounding 
feature. All about is volcanic rock — wide lava fields 
give an awful silence for this grand voice of nature 
to speak in. The river, two hundred yards wide, 
deep and swift, has worn itself a channel one hundred 
feet down into the rock ; then, as if in preparation 
for the grand leap, it indulges in a series of cascades 
of from thirty to sixty feet in hight, and, now gather- 
ing into an unbroken body, it swoops down, in a grand 
horse-shoe shape, twelve hundred feet across, a two 
hundred and ten feet fall, into the bottomless pit 
below. The river is not so wide as Niagara, nor the 
volume of water so great, but the fall is higher, and 
quite as beautiful. It is difficult to get near to the 
falls, because of the high, rough and perpendicular 
walls of rock that guard the stream ; but they can be 
reached with hard climbing both above and below. 
A perpendicular pillar of rock rises one hundred feet 



A VISIT TO MONTANA. 489 

in the midst of the rapids above; islands stand in the 
stream just over the cataract; and two huge rocky 
columns have a place on each side of the falls, as if 
to sentinel the scene, and guard it from sacrilegious 
hands. Either by a day's detour in the trip from the 
Columbia River to Salt Lake, as we have suggested, 
or by a special journey of three or four days from the 
railroad at the latter point, these distinctive and 
distinguished marvels of nature will soon be freely 
visited by Pacific Eailroad travelers, and the details 
of their sublimity more thoroughly catalogued by pen 
and photograph for the general public. 

The stage lines for Idaho and Columbia Eiver, and 
also for Montana, now leave the railroad route near 
the head of Salt Lake. The distance to the capital 
of Idaho is two hundred and fifty miles, and to the 
Columbia River ^ye hundred. On the Montana line, 
it is three hundred miles to Virginia City, four hun- 
dred and twenty-five to Helena, and ^Ye hundred and 
sixty through to Fort Benton, the head of navigation 
on the Missouri River. The rates of stage travel are 
about twenty cents a mile, and the meals at the sta- 
tions along the roads generally one dollar and a half 
This is the quickest route for reaching Montana. The 
only alternative is to go up the Missouri River on 
steamboats to Fort Benton, which is within one hun- 
dred miles of the heart of the Territory. But the 
river journey is long, near two thousand miles, and 
tedious, requiring from two to three weeks. The 
mere visitor to Montana, at least, should go by the 
stages from Salt Lake, cross to Fort Benton, and then 

pass down the river either by steamboat or on an 
30 



490 OUR NEW WEST. 

open floating boat to Omaha. Such a trip would take 
in all three weeks to a month, but be a very interest- 
ing and recompensing circuit. The stage service on 
the Montana route is perhaps the best on the Conti- 
nent, the roads are hard and excellent, the scenery, 
through an open mountain country, fresh, picturesque 
and every way inviting. 

Montana lies three hundred miles north of the Cen- 
tral Eailroad line, chiefly on the eastern slopes of the 
Rocky Mountain range, and amid the head waters of 
the Missouri River, the Gallatin, the Jefierson and the 
Yellowstone, and their branches. Its mountains are 
lower and more open than those of the same range in 
Colorado, and high grazing plains and fertile valleys 
lie freely and spread widely among them. Frequent 
and favorable passes through the range invite easy 
communication with the western slopes, where the 
head-waters of the Columbia start with such volume 
and gather force so quickly, as, in Clark's Fork, within 
the Territory, to become navigable for steamboats, 
and lead on readily to the main waters and the Pa- 
cific Coast through Oregon. So freely is Montana 
thus slashed with streams on both sides her moun- 
tains, so closely does one series interlock with the 
other, and so low and gradual are her passes, that 
her Territory oflers perhaps the most favorable line 
in the whole length of the Republic north and south 
for a continental railroad. Though three hundred 
and four hundred miles north of the present Central 
Railroad, the route of the proposed northern road 
is much less exposed to winter snows than that of 
the former. Though hard to conceive or explain, 



THE GOLD MINES OF MONTANA. 491 

this fact seems to be well-assured, and, with the rich- 
ness of Montana, both in mineral and agricultural 
wealth, it offers abundant security for the completion 
and profitable use of the northern continental road. 
Though delayed, as it probably will be, till after a 
second and more southern road than the present is 
constructed, this cannot long remain unbuilt. No line 
is so short, no other road can probably be built so 
cheaply, or will be so richly aided by water connec- 
tions and tributaries, or will pass through a more 
uniformly fertile country. 

The gold mines of Montana were first discovered 
in 1862, and have produced in all up to 1869 about 
fifty millions of dollars. Claims are made for them 
as high as eighty-five millions; but the lower esti- 
mate is the more reasonable. The years 1865 and 
1866 were those of the greatest excitement and emi- 
gration and gold production in the Territory. In the 
latter year, probably thirty-five thousand people were 
there, and twelve to fifteen millions of dollars were 
taken out, mostly from the sides and bottoms of 
gulches. Two men alone washed out a ton of gold, 
and from a single "bar" in Confederate gulch three 
companies took a million and a half of dollars' worth. 
All kinds of gold-mining are in progress in the Terri- 
tory; the several forms of dirt-washings, — panning, 
"long-toms," sluicing and hydraulic, — and vein or 
quartz excavations with stamp-mills ; and those who 
wish to witness the various processes, and all stages 
of every process, can see them nowhere so well as in 
Montana. Bannock, Virginia City and Helena are 
the centers of the three principal mining districts; 



492 OUR NEW WEST. 

some twenty-five or thirty quartz-mills, with two 
hundred and fifty stamps, have been set up ; and the 
present gold production of the Territory is about 
eight millions of dollars a year, and its population 
twenty-five thousand. 

The protected valleys and high plains, all richly 
watered, have encouraged a rapid agricultural de- 
velopment. Wheat often yields fifty bushels to the 
acre, and enough of the staple articles of food for 
home consumption are already produced in the Ter- 
ritory. All the small grains and vegetables grow 
freely, and there is rich grazing for animals the year 
round. The snows are not heavy, nor do they lie 
long; Helena reports but ten days of sleighing for 
the winter of 1869. Timber grows freely along the 
rivers; saw-mills, tanneries, flouring-mills, and me- 
chanic shops are in active and profitable operation; 
the feverish days have passed in the history of the 
gold-mining, and by no means exhausted the rich and 
recompensing deposits ; so that, with a climate almost 
as favorable as that of Colorado, and a soil nearly as 
fertile, and an industry similarly diversified, Montana 
seems reasonably sure of a steady and healthy growth 
henceforth, and an important place in the future of 
the central regions of the New West. The boat ride 
down the Missouri to his home the traveler will find 
monotonous; for the river is muddy, the banks are 
barren; but it will be a new experience in his 
western touring, and give him opportunity for re- 
viewing and digesting all the various impressions and 
instructions that his summer's journey has garnered. 



XXYI. 

SANDWICH ISLANDS— COLORADO CANYON. 

Hospitalities to Mr. Colfax — What was Left Unseen — The Sandwich 
Islands — Their Past, Present and Future — Their Sugar, Scenery, 
Volcanoes and Climate — Alaska and Arizona — The Country to be 
Opened by the Southern Pacific Railroad — The Canyon of the Col- 
orado — The Unknown Land of the Republic — The Solitary Passage 
of the Canyon — Professor Powell and His Plans — Underground 
Rivers and the Secret of the Gulf Stream — Scientific Explorations 
of the New West — The Slang Words and Phrases of Colorado and 
California — The Indians of the Pacific States — Sentimental Leave- 
taking at San Francisco. 

We came back to San Francisco by steamer from 
Victoria. The first welcome was renewed, and we 
passed our remaining days there in a round of hospi- 
talities, public and private, as generously offered as 
they were gratefully received. The greetings with 
which Mr. Colfax was welcomed everywhere in his 
journeyings through the Pacific States showed equally 
his wide-spread and deep-felt personal popularity and 
the hearty enthusiasm of the people. His was almost 
the first visit of a leading public man to these in- 
terior and Pacific States for the simply patriotic pur- 
pose of informing himself of their interests ; and the 
compliment was most generously reciprocated at 



494 OUR NEW WEST. 

every point and on every hand. No courtesy was 
omittedj no attention withheld from him or his com- 
panions; and the party gained rapid and complete 
knowledge of the countries and the people they 
came out to see. But wide as was our travel, close 
as was our observation, time made a limit to them; 
and we left some inviting regions unvisited, some 
interests unexhausted, — to tempt other travelers, to 
seduce ourselves again. 

The Sandwich Islands, for instance, so foreign a 
country in the thought of the people of the Eastern 
States, are but outlying provinces of our New West, 
and offer many peculiar attractions both to the lovers 
of fresh scenery and the students of our political and 
commercial growth. Between New England mission- 
aries and whalers, the graces and the vices of Chris- 
tian civilization have been distributed among their 
native populations, with fatal results. Like the na- 
tives of the American Continent, they have proven 
incapable of the trials of civilization, and are so 
rapidly dying out that by the year 1900 there is a 
promising prospect that none of the original stock 
will be left. When Captain Cook first introduced 
them to the world in 1742, there were three hundred 
thousand of them; they had eaten each other down 
one-half by 1820, when our missionaries first went 
among them; and since then, the measles, whooping- 
cough, small-pox, influenza, syphilis and other Chris- 
tian diseases, supplanting cannibalism, have reduced 
them to fifty thousand. But the condition and habits 
of those who linger are, on the whole, greatly im- 
proved; and the rate of decrease will probably be 



THE SUGAR CROP OF THE SANDWICH ISLANDS. 495 

sensibly lessened in the future. But the mission- 
aries, who went to teach and pray, have staid to trade 
and cultivate the soil; commerce has invited Ameri- 
can merchants; and the natives have gladly sought 
Americans to help them on in government. The 
English and the French are both considerably repre- 
sented on the Island; but by far the greater part of 
the forty-five hundred white population are Ameri- 
cans, mostly men and women of intelligence and 
character, and leading the Island by sure tendencies 
into the arms of the American Kepublic. The Cali- 
fornians see and seek this result, the Islanders, native 
and foreign, very largely accept it. Few suppose 
the independence of the Islands will last beyond the 
reign of the present King, and his deposition and 
their annexation may be precipitated at almost any 
moment. 

The business of the Islands is mostly with San Fran-, 
cisco; they send hither annually over a million dol- 
lars' worth of raw sugars and tropical fruits, and take 
in return dry goods, wheat and flour, and the material 
ministries of life generally. Sugar is their great 
crop ; but not one quarter of their capacity for its 
production is improved; the business has been badly 
conducted, and of late years very much depressed; 
but it is now passing into more vigorous management, 
directed or inspired from California, and the produc- 
tion for 1867 was forty millions of pounds. It in- 
vites emigration, skill, capital and labor, and receiving 
all, these Islands will rapidly become the producers 
of all the sugar and molasses consumed in our Pacific 
Coast States. Steamers ply twice a month between 



496 OUR NEW WEST. 

Honolulu and San Francisco, the voyage being made 
in about eight days, and sailing vessels are moving 
constantly back and forth in twice or thrice the time ; 
and the familiarity with which the Eastern visitor 
finds "the Islands" spoken of in California; — the 
accounts he receives of their strange scenery, their 
wonderful volcanoes, their delightful climate, their 
various and rich tropical fruits, — all will strongly 
invite him to make them a visit. Indeed, though his 
portfolio may contain choicest specimens of coloring 
and of contour, new harmonies of tint, new measures 
of grandeur, fresh surprises of form, — gathered in 
sojournings among the mountains and parks of Colo- 
rado, or in the deep canyons of the Sierra, yet he 
must not close it, feeling that he has exhausted the 
revelations that this Western World has to make to 
him, until he has added a few sketches at least of the 
yet more unique scenery of the Hawaiian Islands. 

Breezy and sunny, a group of a dozen, though only 
half the number inhabited, these Islands lie two thou- 
sand miles south-west from San Francisco, and we 
reach them through a voyage of serene softness, and 
are welcomed in Honolulu to a mixture of the New 
England country village and the New England sea- 
shore town, clustered imder tropic-laden hills by the 
sea. Beyond the general features of tropical coun- 
tries, tempered by the circling ocean of this island 
home, — narrow, sharp valleys, almost fissures in ab- 
rupt hills, again broad fields for the sugar cane, and 
high rolling hills, everywhere covered with the broad 
leaves, the sprawling trees and shrubs, the interweav- 
ing vines, all of the deep but varying greens of south- 



THE VOLCANOES OF THE SANDWICH ISLANDS. 497 

em climes, fed here especially by abundant rains and 
a high even temperature, — the volcanoes play the part 
of special curiosities, and irresistibly invite the trav- 
eler to their localities. The live Kilauea volcano, 
high up on the lofty Mauna Loa Mountain, on the 
Island of Hawaii, and the stupendous extinct Halea- 
kala on the island of Maui are the two representa- 
tives of this phenomenon, that no one can excuse 
himself for not seeing. Though the smaller, so vast 
is Kilauea that it is impossible to get any idea of its 
gigantic proportions till we have climbed down its 
almost perpendicular walls, and traversed its ten mile 
circuit. The condition of its activity varies greatly 
at different times; sometimes a chain of fiery lakes, 
connected by subterraneous channels, hems in the mol- 
ten mass; sometimes it overleaps its barriers, and 
pours out rivers of fire over the floor of the crater. 
No words could depict the awful fascination of those 
fiery cauldrons, boiling and hissing and roaring, and 
tossing up fountains of liquid flame. The most 
effective time to see it is at evening. Then the 
whole sky is lighted up with the reflection of the 
fire, and the surrounding darkness serves to highten 
the effect of the glowing, seething mass. But Halea- 
kala is a cone ten thousand feet high, with a crater 
three times the size of Kilauea, or thirty miles in cir- 
cumference, and over a thousand feet deep. No 
scene could possibly combine more elements of the 
grand and the beautiful than that presented upon its 
edge at the time of the setting sun ; the soft floccu- 
lent masses of clouds silently rolling in and out of 
these Tartarean depths, through the great gap in the 



498 OUR NEW WEST. 

mountain wall, toward the sea, occasionally breaking 
to reveal the frightful blackness beneath; then, as 
the sun sinks, it touches the whole cloud-landscape 
with a rose-gray glow ; long lines of trade-wind cloud- 
lets, like fleets of phantom ships, go scudding over 
the sea; the three lofty summits of Hawaii, and the 
lesser hights of the islands surrounding Maui, repeat 
the sunset tints, and the whole seems like a scene of 
enchantment. Little steamers connect the principal 
of the Islands; but for the rest of his travels, the 
traveler must depend upon his own horse, — to be 
bought for from five to twenty dollars, — and the 
never-failing hospitality of the scattered white resi- 
dents, — planters and missionaries, — who welcome 
every guest, and send him away with a new appre- 
ciation of the kindly elements in human nature. 

As the natural wonders and beauties of these 
Islands will invite the curious, and the adaptability 
of their soil for sugar, coffee, sweet potatoes, wheat, 
corn, oranges, bananas, pine-apples and cocoa-nuts 
will welcome cultivators and attract merchants, so 
will the climate, — which unvaryingly presents just 
that delicious blending of heat and coolness ■ that 
leaves one puzzled to know whether he is only com- 
fortably warm or refreshingly cool, — encourage the 
visits and residence of the invalids. The lowest the 
mercury ever goes is 60°, the highest 88°, while the 
average temperature of no month is less then 71° 
(January), or more than 79° (August). Could trop- 
ical suns and ocean breezes combine to produce any- 
thing more kind to human weakness than this ? It 
imposes no burden; it takes away no strength; the 



ALASKA AND ARIZONA. 499 

world may be searched in vain for a softer and more 
even climate. 

The more distant portions of our widely-spread 
western possessions, — Alaska on the north, stretching 
to Behring's Straits and the Arctic Ocean, and Lower 
California, Arizona and New Mexico on the south, 
reaching close on to the Halls of the Montezumas, 
where the " Sick Man " of America feebly reigns, — 
remain unfamiliar to ordinary travelers, and are 
almost unknown lands to the general public. But 
while they invite the curiosity, they alarm the love 
of comfort. Their promises of pleasure or profit are 
not yet sure enough to overcome the hardships of 
travel among them. Alaska offers rich stores of fish 
and furs, and in Mount St. Elias, a claimant to the 
highest mountain in the United States ; but accompa- 
nies them with a long, severe winter, and a short, hot 
summer, with little of grace or beauty in landscape, 
or fertility in soil. The plains of Arizona, New 
Mexico and Lower California are dry and barren for 
most of the year, and very hot for much of it. It is 
spiritually reported of an acclimated inhabitant of 
this region, that, after translation to the warmest 
departments of that bourne whence no traveler re- 
turns, — however he may rap back his feelings and 
thoughts, — wrote to his old home with shivering suf- 
ferino; to beo; that his blankets midit be sent to him 
per first express! Arizona holds out the assurance 
of the richest gold-quartz on the continent ; but the 
Apache Indians, the sturdiest of the American sav- 
ao-es, and the least amenable of all our old settlers to 
bribery or bullets, stand guard over them. Lower 



500 OUR NEW WEST. 

California promises copper and grain, coffee and rice, 
but waits for cheap labor and more abundant capital. 

The Southern Pacific Eailroad will reveal the mys- 
teries and awaken the capacities of all this southern 
tier of Territories, between Missouri, Arkansas and 
Texas, and the Pacific Coast. It has a wealth of 
rivers, especially in its eastern portions, that are 
guaranty of fertile valleys; we know it offers high 
and broad and dry plains; the latitude assures us of 
a mild climate; and if the precious metals prove 
scant or unremunerative, we may be certain that 
agriculture has treasures untold within its lines. Of 
all our grand continental area, we popularly know 
the least of that broad belt, stretching from the Mis- 
sissippi River south of St. Louis through to the Pacific 
Ocean, — between the thirty-seventh and thirtieth par- 
allels, — yet we are likely to be the more astonished 
at its revelations under the unveiling of the second 
continental railroad, whose track will pierce through 
near its center, than we have been over all that set- 
tlers and travelers have told us of the now more 
familiar northern sections of our New West. 

But the great mocking mystery of our geography 
is the Grand Canyon of the Colorado and the region 
of country along and around it. The government 
maps, noting only what is absolutely known, carry 
a great blank to represent it. Rivers end abruptly, 
and, three or four hundred miles below, their common 
receptacle, a monster stream, begins as abruptly. 
This vacant region comprises the northern part of 
Arizona, and the south-eastern part of Utah, and is 
three hundred miles from north to south and two 



A TEKRIBLE VOYAGE. 501 

hundred miles from east to west. Is any other nation 
so ignorant of such a piece of itself? We know this 
simply of it, — that it is generally high, barren table- 
land, of a volcanic rocky character; that the waters 
of the western slopes of the Kocky Mountains in 
Colorado and Wyoming and Utah, making up the 
Grand and Green Bivers, come together within it, and 
form the grand Colorado of the West; and that this 
stream then flows for three hundred miles between 
massive walls of solid rock, averaging three thousand 
feet of perpendicular hight, up which no one can 
climb, down which a safe descent is impossible, and 
between which the confined stream courses always 
rapidly, often madly, with falls and eddies, ever fear- 
fully to whoever should commit himself to its waters. 
Every one, who has ever come to these high banks, 
has found it impossible to reach the waters beneath; 
no one has ever dared knowingly to enter the Canyon 
from above and go down the stream; and its ascent 
from below has been too severe an undertaking for 
any personal enterprise. 

We have only one authentic account of a passage 
through this mysterious, majestic Canyon. It was a 
terrible voyage, indeed; unwittingly begun, almost 
miraculously completed. Three men, hunting for 
gold in south-western Colorado in the summer of 
1867, were attacked by Indians while in camp near 
where the San Juan Eiver enters the Colorado; one 
was killed, the others with a part of their provisions 
escaped, and took to the stream on a rough raft. 
With little knowledge of what they were doing, they 
drifted into the Colorado, here with open banks, and 



502 OUR NEW WEST. 

on down its broad smooth current; soon they found 
themselves within the high walls, and among foaming 
rapids; but on the second day, the provisions and one 
of the men was swept off and lost in going over a 
cataract ; the other, James White, having lashed him- 
self to the logs, remained, and, alone, and without 
food, upon these strange waters, the sun almost con- 
suming him with its direct rays, rapids and whirlpools 
tossing him hither and thither, and calling on all his 
strength to keep from following the fate of his com- 
rade, the rocky walls on each side never less than one 
thousand feet high, and often as he thought a mile 
and a half, wild berries on little islands at first giving 
him trifling nourishment, and in their absence the 
lizards tantalizing his hunger by escaping his reach, — 
thus this unconscious pioneer of, perhaps, the most 
wonderful phenomenon of the world, with sufferings 
of body and mind indescribable, made the long voy- 
age, and at the end of fourteen days, for seven of 
which he had no food whatsoever, came out of the 
prison walls of the stream, and reached the Indian 
and white settlements near Callville, the head of 
navigation on the Colorado Eiver. He was scarcely 
alive, and one of the first persons who saw him ex- 
claimed, "My God, that man is a hundred years old!" 
But he recovered, and lives as testimony to what had 
been before a marvelous fable, and is still a fact that 
calls keenly for further exploration and description. 

We shall not now wait long for this probably. 
Before even this experience was known. Professor 
Powell, an enthusiastic geologist of Illinois, had se- 
cured government assistance in a personal plan for 



PEOF. POWELL AND THE CANYONS. 503 

exploring the Parks and Mountains of Colorado, and 
then going down the Canyon of the Colorado. He 
and a corps of young scientific assistants spent the 
summer of 1868 in carrying out his first purpose, 
and passed the winter of 1869 in camp on one of the 
tributaries of the Colorado, with the intent of enter- 
ing the Canyon the ensuing summer. The progress 
of the expedition will be awaited with great interest 
Professor Powell is well educated, an enthusiastic, res- 
olute, and gallant leader, as his other title of Major and 
an absent arm, won and lost in the war, testify, — 
seemingly well-endowed, save in his single arm, physi- 
cally and mentally for the arduous work of both body 
and brains that he has undertaken. 

Nearly all of the rivers of Colorado and Utah and 
many of those of California run for brief distances, 
from one to twenty-five miles, through such gorges 
of rock; or they "canyon," as, by making a verb out 
of the Spanish noun, the people of the country de- 
scribe the streams as performing the feat of such rock 
passages, where their banks are inapproachable, and 
trails or roads are sent over or around; but this rock- 
guarded career of the great river of the Interior Basin 
of the Continent is the Grand Canyon of the world, 
and one of its most wonderful marvels. Its passage 
in well protected boats by careful navigators can 
scarcely be deemed impracticable, however danger- 
ous; but the general judgment of residents in Col- 
orado and Arizona is, that it should be made from 
below, ascending the stream with the help of poles 
and ropes, rather than descending it from above, which 
would expose the navigators to the freaks of falls^ 



504 OUR NEW WEST. 

rapid currents, and whirling eddies, that they will 
come upon without warning. White, the hero of the 
first voyage, estimates that he must have gone near 
five hundred miles upon the river, for most of the way 
within the confined Canyon, impassable as a fortress, 
a dungeon over a cataract. 

This secret being explored, who shall next solve 
the deeper enigma of two great under-ground rivers, 
larger and longer each than Mississippi or Colum- 
bia, one running beneath the Rocky Mountains from 
north to south, and debouching unseen into the Gulf 
of Mexico, and the other coming up under the South 
American Andes, and entering the Caribbean Sea, — 
both heated by the internal volcanic fires through 
which they pass, their volume and force of outflow 
not only accounting for the elevation of the waters 
of the gulf and sea above the ocean, but originating 
that mysterious river of the ocean, the Gulf Stream? 
That such things be is the faith of Mr. George Cat- 
lin, who, having exhausted the Indians of North 
America, has of late turned his studies to its moun- 
tains and rocks and rivers, with this result. His grand 
theory has the advantage certainly of not being read- 
ily disproved. But most travelers and scientific ex- 
plorers will find enough to do for a generation to 
come, at least, in unraveling the mysteries and cata- 
loguing the curiosities above ground in all this New 
World of ours; and Mr. Catlin's theory must wait 
for its proof till the Colorado gold-miners dig down 
into his grand river beneath their mountains. 

The hand of science has as yet touched but lightly 
here and there over the vast area of Western Amer- 



THE SLANG OF THE -WEST. 505 

ica. Professor Whitney has done much to reduce 
California to intelligent order, but much also remains 
to complete so intricate and important a work. Pro- 
fessor Powell's gleanings in Colorado through all the 
fields of science will be valuable as guides for more 
thorough explorations in the future ; and Mr. Clar- 
ence King is completing with government assistance 
an important reconnoissance of the mineral deposits 
and agricultural capacities along a hundred-mile belt 
between the Plains and California, through the center 
of which runs the first Pacific Railroad. Beyond 
these, our exact knowledge of what this country w^as, 
is and may be rests upon the imperfect reports of 
emigrants, gold and silver seekers, and superficial 
railroad surveys; and these, though valuable, provoke 
and confuse the scholar, rather than satisfy his thirst 
for information. 

The fresh idiomatic phrases and ^^ slang" words, 
that pour in on the ear of the traveler through our 
New West, and especially in its mining districts, will 
greatly amuse and interest him. The language seems 
to be finding an invigoration among these hearty and 
candid residents of the borders of civilization. They 
are not drawn, indeed, from "the well of English 
undefiled;" but they bubble up from fresh springs, 
sometimes all sparkling with wit and meaning, and 
many of them will win their way and keep their 
place in the common stream of our mother tongue. 
What wealth of new words and new meanings for 
old ones would Shakespere not have gathered up in 
a week's life among the miners of White Pine for 

instance? "You bet" is an emphatic afiirmative; 
31 



506 OUE NEW WEST. 

^^get up and get" an earnest command to go; "pan 
out/' borrowed from washing sands for gold, signifies 
turning out or amounting to, — thus a man or a specu- 
lation "pans out" good or bad as the case may be; 
"weaken" is widely used to express all kinds of fail- 
ing or failure; a finely dressed woman "rags out;" 
a humbug or cheat is a "bilk;" a loafer is a "bum- 
mer;" "shebang"*' is applied to any sort of a shop, house 
or office; "outfit" to anything new you have got; and 
"affidavit" comprehends everything for which no 
other word is handy; "bull-whacking" is driving an 
ox team, a business in which the present Senator 
Stewart of Nevada began his life in that State; 
"how" is adopted from the Indians as an abbrevi- 
ation for "how do you do?" or "how are you?"; 
"peter out" stands again for failure; "bed rock" for 
the end or bottom of things; "show" or "color" in- 
dicates promise or prospect; the Spanish "corral" is 
adapted to any sort of capture or control, — as that a 
broker had "corralled" the stock of a certain company; 
a "biled shirt" is a white one; "square" anything 
excellent or perfect; "on it" signifies an earnest pur- 
suit of any special end, and applied to a woman set- 
tles her character the wrong way; "you can't prove 
it by me," a general doubt or denial; "none of it in 
mine," a declination; — and so on indefinitely almost, 
a new phase or word coming up into society from 
below every little while, having its run and trial, and 
becoming a permanency or being banished, as it is 
found to stand the tests of taste and of genuine 
meaning, or not. 

Except the Apache tribe in Arizona, who are a 



THE INDIAI^S AND ^'ROAD AGENTS." 607 

strong, warlike and implacable race, the Indians are 
generally subdued and inoffensive throughout all the 
Pacific Coast region. In California, they numbered 
over one hundred thousand in 1823, while now they 
are reduced to twenty thousand, or less. These live 
mostly on reservations, and engage successfully in 
agricultural labors. The Indian tribes of California 
and Mexico seem alike a branch of the Asiatic races, 
rather than kindred to the genuine North American 
Indian. In Oregon, and Nevada, and Washington, 
the Indians are also few and fading, and rarely now 
come into collision with the whites. Those of British 
Columbia and Alaska develop the characteristics of 
the Esquimaux, and the white settlers have little 
serious trouble with them. In Idaho and Eastern 
Oregon, the tribes have been at times rebellious 
against their destiny, and now make travel in some 
sections dangerous. But as a rule, the Indians west 
of the Eocky Mountains are peaceful, have ceased to 
struggle against their conquerors, and take such 
terms as they can get, and stoically look decay 
and death in the face. Travel is more likely to en- 
counter trouble from white highway robbers, or "road 
agents," in the vernacular of the West, than from the 
enfeebled red men. These adopt the style of the 
Italian and Mexican bandits, mask themselves, stop 
the solitary traveler, or a stage-coach of passengers, 
despoil them of money and valuables, under threat of 
instant death from levelled muskets at any resistance, 
and then let their victims pass unharmed bodily, but 
very empty in pocket and sheepish in feelings. The 
interior is destined, probably, to pass through an era 



508 OUK NEW WEST. 

of this sort of crime; already it has broken out on 
the remote roads of California, and on the regular 
routes in Nevada and Idaho. The vicious and va- 
grant populations that followed the progress of the 
Eailroad in its building, and have been set loose by 
its completion ; the similar elements turned adrift by 
the failure of mining enterprises, both furnish the 
needy and desperate characters for the business. 
Not unlikely they may grow bold enough to stop 
and "go through" a railroad train. But the S23irit 
of the country will meet such violence with sharp 
punishment. The "road agents" will get no benefit 
from the law's delay, and their career will not be 
long. 

But we must not linger longer on the interesting 
themes that scenery, society and civilization so thickly 
present to us in this new land of Western America. 
We grew sentimental as the close of our experiences 
on the Pacific Coast approached. With ball and din- 
ner, with flowers and friendship, our hosts made the 
parting both sweet and sad. Dainty in phrase as 
hearty in feeling, the San Franciscans, half French- 
man and wholly American, gave the coup de grace to 
such a summer of hospitality, both of sense and spirit, 
as was never ours before. 

But all is over now, — the Speaker has made his 
farewell speech ; Governor Bross has addressed the 
last Sunday-school ; the brass band is hushed, — 

"And silence, like a poultice, comes, 
To heal the blows of sound ; — " 

the final photograph is taken, — and rare photographs, 
indeed, both of faces and scenery, do the skill of the 



THE LAST LOOK AT CALIFORNIA. 509 

artist and clearness of the air combine to produce 
on this Coast : the tongue has wagged its last good- 
bye; and the hour of waving and drying handker- 
chiefs is passing! Through the Golden Gate, the 
"Golden City" takes us out into the Pacific Sea; 
and we turn our eyes and our thoughts forward for 
Home. But California and her sister States enlarge 
upon the inward, the backward vision. It runs 
quickly and surely to a world-encircling commerce, 
a world-embracing civilization, an Empire that shall 
be the glory and the culmination of the American 
Kepublic! 



XXVII. 

HOME BY THE ISTHMUS. 

ITie Steamship Line between San Francisco and New York by tne 
Isthmus— Its Business, and its Relations to Pacific Coast Life— The 
Revolution of the Railroad— Our Voyage Home— Life on a Cali- 
fornia Steamer— The Scenery Along the Coast— Panama and its 
Bay— The Ride Across the Isthmus— Tropical Sights and Experi- 
ences—The Quick Trip on the Atlantic Side to New York- The 
Continental Journey Ended and Summed Up— America Realizes 
Herself and Recognized by the World. 

Though the Pacific Kailroad entirely changes the 
manner and course of travel between the Atlantic 
and Pacific States, no account of California life is 
complete, no review of the social and business devel- 
opment of our Pacific Coast Empire can be intelligent, 
that does not present the steamship service by the 
Panama route. This has been the grand avenue of 
travel and of business between our East and our 
West. Previous to 1869, where one person went to 
Nevada or California or returned, overland, one hun- 
dred at least went and came by the steamers and 
crossed the Isthmus. This travel built the Railroad 
across the Isthmus, and created lines of ocean steam- 
ers, that carried more passengers, and with greater 



THE BUSINESS OF THE STEAMERS. 511 

comfort and luxury, than any other steamship line 
in the world. 

Back and forth on this line for years have passed 
from three to six thousand persons a month; it car- 
ried to the Pacific States in 1868 nearly fifty thou- 
sand passengers, and brought back over twenty 
thousand. In the same year over fifty-five thousand 
tons of merchandise were carried into San Francisco 
over this steamship and Isthmus route; their total 
value being nearly fifty millions of dollars, and the 
charges for freight nearly three millions of dollars. 
Here alone was freight enough from New York to 
San Francisco to load a railway train of thirty cars 
with five tons each, every morning in the whole year! 
The average tariff of charges by the steamers for the 
service in 1868 was forty-five dollars a ton; while in 
1867 they carried only about half as many goods at 
sixty-five dollars a ton. These figures do not include 
the freight coming from California to the East, which 
of course is not near so much as that going the other 
way, though during the Eastern demand for flour 
last year, very heavy; but they serve to exhibit 
the great amount of business done upon the steam- 
ship and Isthmus route, and convey an idea of the 
traffic which the Continental Raih^oad, — performing 
the same service in less than half the time, — has 
offered to its competition in the beginning. The 
steamers will, of course, lose all freight in which speed 
is a first object, and the greater part if not the whole 
of their through passengers; but they expect to so 
increase their general merchandise business, from the 
enlarged traf&c of the two sides of the Continent, 



512 OUK NEW WEST. 

and the diversion of much of the Asiatic trade in 
this direction, as to maintain their lines profitably. 

The glory of their history is departed, however; 
the romance, the comedy, the tragedy of a trip to or 
from California, down to and through the tropics and 
across the Isthmus, and back again on another shore, 
are all over. The steamers will be deserted of the 
gay, the rich and the beautiful; and Love has lost 
one of its great American opportunities. How can 
sentiment flourish on a whistling, wheezing, bouncing 
railioad train, every passenger begrimed with dust, 
and denied all opportunity of clean clothes, even of 
a tolerable toilet ? Only the coarse freight, only the 
poor emigrants, to whom money is more than time, 
will now occupy the steamers. The world henceforth 
goes with Pullman by rail; and the poetry of the 
California journey, which has so long fluttered in 
white linens and delicate muslins, and lounged along 
broad and canopied decks, or cooed in capacious state- 
rooms, is supplanted by the plain prose of repellant 
cloth and paper collars, and a single seat and a nar- 
row berth in a crowded car. 

But our return home in 1865 was made when 
the steamship service was in its best estate ; the trip 
introduced us to strange scenery and society, — to 
the life and peoples of the tropics, — to varied and 
unique experiences with nature and human nature; 
and it was a fit rounding of our gay and anomalous 
Pacific Coast summer. The European voyage is ten 
or a dozen days of a rough sea, out of sight of land, 
and with a hundred or two of people very like your- 
self; often a dreary confinement in tossing berth, — n, 



THE BABIES ON THE BOAT. 513 

penitentiary without its security. But the California 
sea trip is to this as kaleidoscope to common spec- 
tacles ; it occupies over three weeks ; we sail for most 
of the way on seas as smooth as inland lakes, by 
shores rich with tropic greens; our vessel is larger, 
more convenient and luxurious; we have a thousand 
companions, — more or less, and oftener more than 
less, — of the all-est sorts of people ; we sit down to 
tables as varied and abundant as those of first-class 
hotels ; and everything invites a season of repose, of 
luxury, of the senses. 

The crowd is the only source of standing discom- 
fort. We are as thick as flies in August; four and 
five in a state-room ; we must needs divide into eat- 
ing battalions, and go twice for our meals : would we 
have chairs to sit in shade around the decks, we must 
buy and bring them: there is no privacy; gamblers 
jostle preachers; commercial women divide state- 
rooms with fine ladies ; honest miners in red flannel 
sit next my New York exquisite in French broad- 
cloth : — and as for the babies, they fairly swarm, — 
the ship is one grand nursery; and like the British 
drum-beat, the discordant music of their discomfort 
follows sun, moon and stars through every one of 
every twenty-four hours. There were at least one 
hundred of them on our ship ; and new and kinder 
notions of old King Herod prevailed among sufier- 
ing passengers. The new historian Froude makes 
saint and anchorite of wife-changing, woman-killing 
Henry the Eighth : why should not some ambitious 
rival, gaining new light from the California voyage, 
make public benefactor of baby-slaughtering Herod ? 



514 OUB NEW WEST. 

The Coast hills along California make rough and 
barren work of the shore view; but as we get down 
to Mexico, the hills open and become clothed with 
deep green. The weather, never cold, grows hot; 
flannels come off; the fortunate in white linen blos- 
6om out in spotless garb; the close and crowded 
etate-rooms turn out their sleepers on the cabin 
floors, the decks, everywhere and anywhere that 
iSL breath of air can be wooed ; babies lie around 
<oosely and au naturel ; you have to pick your way 
ftt night about the open parts of the ship, as tender 
visitor to fresh battle-field. The languor of the 
tropics comes over you all; perspiration stands in 
great drops, or flows in rivulets from the body; a 
creamy, hazy feeling possesses the senses; working 
is abandoned; reading becomes, an effort; card-play- 
ing ceases to lure ; dreaming, dozing and scandal^ 
talking grow to be the occupations of the ship's com- 
pany, — possibly scandal-making, for the courtesans 
become bold and flaunt, and the weak and imprudent 
ehow that they are so. 

Half way down, at the end of the first week, we 
stop at Acapulco, the chief Mexican port on the 
Pacific Coast, founded by Spain, and famous in the 
days of her prosperous American commerce. It lies 
beautifully under the hills, back of an island, which 
forms an exquisite and safe bay. Here we taste of 
tropical life on shore ; here we sample the Mexicans 
and Mexican Republic. It is a pitiful civilization 
that they present, and not very inspiring of sympa- 
thy or hope. The Mexican population is several 
thousands, and there are only two or three famijies 



THE MEXICANS AT ACAPULCO. 515 

of whites. The Mexicans are a mulattoish race, an 
apparent cross between Indians and negroes, with 
here and there a vein of Spanish blood. Indolence 
and incompetency mark their life and character. 
The principal local industry appears to be the sup- 
plying of the passengers on the steamships, that 
stop here, going either way, for coal and provisions, 
with fruits and fancy shell-work. The houses are 
low, adobe, and with thick walls, and whitewashed 
on the outside; the streets no wider than a gener- 
ous city sidewalk ; the plaza or church square opens 
broad but barren, — and here is the market-place, 
where, from little stands or on the pavement, the 
simple wares and food and fruits and fancy shells 
of the people, are offered for sale by gross women, 
dreary old hags, or precocious girls; and chaffering 
goes on day and evening with citizen and stranger. 
A few of us landed and spent the evening on shore ; 
it was a weird scene that the market-place presented 
under the rude and scant torch-light. Occasionally 
we found a comely girl among the stands, with rounded 
arm and bright eye, and such usually got the best 
bargains from our party. A trick of their trade is 
to make the stranger a present of some petty article, 
even to force it upon him, with flattering manner and 
speech; and then to exact gallant and munificent re- 
turn in coin. This is type of tropical trading the 
world over, and in all ages, I believe. Did not Abra- 
ham or other of the old prophets buy land for burial- 
place for his kindred under such embarrassing cir- 
cumstances ? Close and heavy was the evening's 
heat; and the people, not busy trading with the 



516 OUR NEW WEST. 

Yankees, lay around loose in hammocks, or on the 
floors of piazza, thinly raimented, stolid, indifierent 
and idolent. 

Though Aeapulco is the largest town in the west 
of Mexico, and its chief Pacific port, there is not a 
single road out from it to the interior ; there is no 
ingress or egress save on foot or horseback ; no other 
means of communication between it and the capital. 
The town has no wheeled vehicle of higher preten- 
sions than a wheelbarrow. What can be done for a 
people who, with two hundred years and more of 
contact with civilization, can do no more for them- 
selves ? It was season of religious festivity when we 
were there; and among the distinguished personages 
we were presented to, was a fat old mulatto priest, 
who had come in from the interior to preside at the 
church ceremonies, and had brought along with him, 
for Christian solace and refection for himself and fol- 
lowers, a couple of hundred rare fighting cocks ! But 
here were the groves of palm, of banana, of cocoa- 
nut; here, luxuriant in the open air, the broad leaves 
and rich colors of many plants that are seen in the 
temperate latitudes only in hot-houses; here, fresh 
from trees, on the trees, were the delicious fruits that 
come to us at home only after long voyages, and 
often stale and tasteless. 

On down the Coast again, past Mexico, out of sight, 
of course, but not out of thought of its mammoth vol- 
cano, Popocatapetl, the highest known mountain of 
North America, (seventeen thousand seven hundred 
and eighty-three feet); across the gulf Tehuan tepee; 
past Guatemala; past its wonderful and beautiful vol- 



PANAMA AND ITS BAY. 517 

canic mountains, peaceful now, but exquisite in out- 
line, perfect in cone-shapes, and rising to thirteen and 
fourteen thousand feet in hight; past San Salvador; 
amused with the lively little flying fishes that single 
or in shoals skipped from wave to wave, flashing in 
the sunlight, as dexterous boy skips bright stone over 
the water, and awed with tropical lightning that made 
the heavens all aglow with wide and frequent flashes; 
past Nicaragua, where one of the American lines of 
steamers stop, and their passengers cross to Atlantic 
waters; then Costa Kica; steering easterly all this 
while to keep the tapering Continent; last. New Gra- 
nada; and on early morning, at the close of a fort- 
night from San Francisco, rounding into the wide, 
warm bay of Panama, where the narrow neck of land, 
that connects and divides two seas and two Conti- 
nents, confronts us. It is a charming scene, as we 
go past the richly-green islands of the bay, one with 
thriving-looking town at its base, another holding 
sacredly exclusive the sad burial-place for strange^ 
travelers, another the depot for the steamships, 
others undisputed with luxuriant and grasping na- 
ture, and anchor, amid all, in front of the quaint 
old city of Panama. The harbor itself is center for 
wide commerce North and South, gathering here to 
cross the Isthmus, and reach American and European 
centers ; but a bad bar forces the slow use of lighters 
for passengers and freight. 

Panama we found to be only an improvement over 
Acapulco; it mingled more modern quality with its 
as ancient features; the streets were broader; the 
houses of two stories; and carts and rickety omni- 



518 OUE NEW WEST. 

buses, and a fine carriage or two, as well as retail 
stores by Jews or Yankees, and large warehouses 
under English or American superintendence, showed 
the innovations and elevations of commerce. There 
was a flavor of Spanish about everything, however; 
the food, the churches, the stores, the town generally; 
decayed, effete, luxuriant, tropical Spanish. The na- 
tives were a good deal mixed, bearing all the mu- 
latto shades; the women flaunting in narrow, sleazy 
white gowns, rich with wide negro ruflles and furbe- 
lows ; and the children rollicking in single, short, wide 
chemises, or unblushing and bold with utter absence 
of covering. The churches, ancient, cheap and moss- 
grown, won no veneration except for their antiquity ; 
they told of no interest in religion ; of nothing but a 
tawdry, vulgar fanaticism; a lazy, cock-fighting priest- 
hood, and an indifferent parish. We found the bats 
flying about in the arches above and behind the altar, 
and priests and boys firing guns at them, among the 
poor tinselry of the worship, with results more dam- 
aging to "bell, book and candle" than birds. 

At mid-day, the long and crowded passenger train 
started across the Isthmus, — treasure and baggage 
waited for a second, — and we had that ever-memo- 
rable ride, in the experience of all who have ever 
made this trip, between the Continents, from Ocean 
to Ocean, in the very fullness of the tropics, over rails 
fairly built upon human bodies, so fatal was the 
miasma of the country to nearly all classes of im- 
ported laborers. The road is fifty miles long, and 
the run is made in two to three hours. Monopolizing 
the commerce of all the Pacific Coast of both North 



THE SCENES ON" THE ISTHMUS. 519 

and South America, the gateway for all travel from 
Continent to Continent, it is a rich possession to its 
owners. The fare for this two hours' ride is no less 
than twenty-five dollars, and freights are correspond- 
ingly high. The sleepers and ties of the track are 
of lignum-vita3 wood, the telegraph posts of cement, 
as thus only are both protected from rot and insect. 
The road is well appointed in other respects, and the 
service unexceptionable. 

But the ride was rare revelation. All was sub- 
stantially new and strange to our unused northern 
eyes; and we stared and wondered and absorbed 
through all this tropical passage. The sun was not 
fierce ; one will suffer more from heat in a ride from 
Springfield to New York of a dry and dusty August 
day; but the warmth was deep and high, — it lay in 
thick, heavy, sensuous folds in the air, — it did not 
fret, but it permeated and subdued and enriched. 
With Nature, it was season of rest, — colors were 
dulled from the spring and early summer hues, — 
but what quantity! what ripeness and fullness! what 
luxuriant, wanton rioting! There was no limit to 
variety or aboundingness of tree and shrub, and 
plant and flower and grass. Waste and robbery, 
there could not be in such abundance ; the vacancy 
of to-day's ax or fire is filled to-morrow; only daily 
use of hatchet and scythe keeps open path. Palms 
everywhere, singly and in groves, with great rough 
fruit, rich in oil; ferns as trees and in forests; clus- 
ters of bananas as big as an honest two-bushel char- 
coal basket, yet hidden by the generous leaves of 
their tree; bread-fruit and cocoa-nuts ripening and 



520 OUR NEW WEST. 

rotting out of reach of man or beast; tall oaks and 
short oaks; little trees and big trees of every family, 
interlaced so closely that you could not tell where 
one begun and the other left off; vines^ tender and 
strong, marrying everything to everybody, running 
up, and running down, and running around, dropping 
down lines straight and stiff like ropes, all through 
the woods, making swings everywhere, but permit- 
ting no place for their play; great, coarse, flaming 
flower, and delicate, tender microscopic blossom hold- 
ing up its cup by roadside, between rails, on every 
hand; occasionally bright plumage of gay bird flut- 
tered across the vision among thick foliage, and hid 
behind leaves so wide and long that we knew why 
Adam and Eve needed no tailor or mantua-maker, — - 
one would sufiice for all ordinary length of naked- 
ness: — thus and more like it and continuously was 
our ride across the Isthmus. 

At frequent intervals along the road are well-built 
stations with handsome yards and gardens and Amer- 
ican occupants. Adjoining, and at other points, we 
passed crowded negro hamlets and villages; their 
houses frequently thatched both on top and side with 
the generous leaves of the adjoining forests, and 
their food the easy-growing fruits and vegetables of 
the tropics. What work they will do the Kailroad 
probably furnishes. The mark of the white man is 
among them; if dead, he yet liveth in the blood of 
the native; but the habit of the negro is dominant. 
The climate and their rude wants invite a lazy, sen- 
sual life, and such is theirs. There is small expendi- 
ture for clothes; boys and girls, even of full growth, 



ASPINWALL AND NEW YORK. 521 

stroll freely about before the passing trains, and 
among their fellows, with not a rag of clothing to 
their bodies ; and the men, when they do work, strip 
as fully to the task. 

We pass by the thick and sinuous Chagres River, 
up and down which in flat-boats the early passengers 
by this route were pushed by the negro ; along whose 
banks in this slow and painful passage many laid 
down to die; and out of whose fetid breath came 
many a long-lurking and finally fatal fever. The 
passage is now made so quickly in the cars, that 
there is little danger at any season of taking the 
fever of the country. 

We came into Aspinwall, in the first rain storm 
that we had felt since rain and hail pelted us so mer- 
cilessly on the Plains near Fort Kearney, nearly four 
months before, and found that a dreary new town of 
one street, lined with hotels and shops and Jamaica 
negroes and negresses. These people are proof 
against this climate; they luxuriate and thrive from 
the start here, and it was due to their importation 
that the Eailroad was finally completed, as it was, 
after all other importations, white and black alike, 
had fallen in their tracks along its line of rotting 
nature, stirred to revengeful miasma by shovel and 
pick. Aspinwall has no past like Panama, no present 
and no future but what the Railroad and Steam-ships 
make for it ; and we w^elcomed the summons to the 
new steamer for New York. 

The finest of weather, and the quickest trip ever 
made from the Isthmus to New York, — six and a 
half days, — waited upon us. The September equi- 
32 



522 OUK NEW WEST. 

noctial was past due^ but we escaped even tlie breath 
of it; the Carribbean Sea forgot its accustomed 
crispness and spared our stomachs and appetites; 
and, threading our way through the West India 
Islands; stopping at none, and catching glimpse of 
but few ; passing near but outside Cuba, and waving 
our hands to its eastern shores, we swept up on calm 
waters, under summer skies, into the broad Atlantic; 
caught the Gulf Stream and crossed it; cherished 
our fears of a rough time " off Hatteras/' and awoke 
to find the dreaded spot the smoothest sea of all; 
and passed into ever beautiful and now dearly wel- 
comed New York harbor on a soft September morn- 
ins:. It is five thousand miles from San Francisco to 
New York by this route ; our trip was made in 
twenty-one days; it could easily be brought within 
eighteen; but the steamers more often occupy twenty- 
four. 

Thus we closed our tour of the American Conti- 
nent; from longitude one degree to longitude thirty- 
four degrees; from latitude fifty to latitude seven; 
journeying in all some twelve thousand miles, half 
by sea, and a third by stage ; crossing the great 
mountain ranges of the Continent; exploring the 
forests, the mines, the commerce of a new world; 
seeing and learning the field of a new empire; enjoy- 
ing the most generous of hospitality in every possible 
and imaginable form; and came back to our homes 
in a trifle more than four months from the day of 
leaving them, rich with knowledge and growth, with 
fuller measure of the American Republic and larger 
faith in its destiny. What few saw then is admitted 



OUTLINE OF AN OYERLAIS'D TRIP. 623 

now; what was then promised is now half-realized; 
the continental railroad, then but just begun, is now 
completed ; and over its swift line, through its quick 
development, America sees and welcomes her New 
West, and the World recognizes America ! 



A TWO MONTHS' JOURNEY 

TO AND THROUGH THE PACIFIC STATES BY THE PACIFIC 

RAILROAD. 

DAYS. 

From Omaha to Cheyenne and Denver, 2 

Excursions in Colorado, 9 

To Salt Lake City, 2 

Stay in Salt Lake City, 2 

To Virginia City and there, 2 

To San Francisco, with two days to stop on the way, 3 

In and about San Francisco, 7 

Yo Semite Valley and Big Trees, Iq 

Overland to Oregon, g 

From Portland to Victoria, through Washington Territory and 

Puget's Sound, and back, 7 

From Portland to Salt Lake by Columbia Eiver, Idaho and Sho- 
shone Falls, g 

From Salt Lake to Omaha, 2 

Total, ^ 

This is obviously a short allowance for so compre- 
. hensive a journey ; but every traveler can enlarge it 

to suit his comfort and convenience. He cannot ad- 
vantageously cut down Colorado, San Francisco and 
its neighborhoods, or the Yo Semite, but may well 
add a week to each. Another month would allow 
the traveler to return through Montana and down 
the Upper Missouri, besides scattering an extra week 



524 OUK NEW WEST. 

along through the previous portions of his journey. 
Two months more still, — or from June 1 to November 
1^ — would include, with all the above, a liberal excur- 
sion to the Sandwich Islands. And the weather in 
all these five months would be favorable for every 
part of the grand trip ; only in the Islands would 
water-proofs and umbrellas be needed. For the two 
months' journey, we would recommend July and Au- 
gust; for the three, July, August and September. 
California is in its summer glory in April and May; 
but that is too early for its mountains or the Yo 
Semite; and the Parks and Mountains of Colorado, 
though passable in June, are much more accessible in 
July and August. 

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